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THE SINKING SHIP 


BY 


EVA LATHBURY 

11 

AUTHOR OF 
THE LONG GALLERY 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1909 






V 




A 


Copyright, igog, 

By 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Published, November, iqoq 


©CI,Aa5i§.49 

* t * 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER page 

I. The Courtesy Curtain i 

II. Will You Walk into My Parlor? . . 31 

III. The Devil and the Deep Sea .... 47 

IV. Concession 71 

V. Walking in the Dark 85 

VI. Tricks of the Trade 99 

VII. A Glass of Tokay 115 

VIII. Vox POPULI 133 

IX. The Wheel within the Wheel . . .156 

X. Riding Light 177 

XI. The Undiscovered Country .... 196 

XII. “Almost Thou Persuadest Me” . . . 212 

XIII. Day-Dreaming and Divorce .... 228 

XIV. The Bell across the River .... 247 

XV. A Prophet of Baal 262 

XVI. Inflammation 280 

XVII. The Writing on the Wall . . . .301 



THE SINKING SHIP 


CHAPTER I 

THE COURTESY CURTAIN 

It was close on twelve of an April morning, and 
the sunlight flickered cheerfully over the frontage 
of a red-brick house in Barkston Gardens, S.W. 

A housemaid was at work in the drawing-room 
on the first floor, but in dilatory fashion. She 
was a small, plump girl, with a pert face, pink as 
her cotton gown, and it was plain that her real 
attention belonged to the young footman stretched 
at full length in his master’s favorite chair before 
the hearth. At intervals she gave a toss to her 
yellow head, she snorted; finally, as though the 
occasion called for yet sterner measures, she 
pushed a stool noisily across the parquetry floor, 
mounted it and proceeded to scrub with her duster 


2 The Sinking Ship 

the surface of the life-size portrait at which her 
companion was gazing. 

A devilish fine woman/’ was all she got, how- 
ever, in return for this manoeuver, and she 
descended from her perch as brusquely as she had 
ascended. 

Think so ? ” she replied, stepping backwards 
as though to get a more comprehensive view of the 
painted lady. ‘‘ Not my style,” and she ran her 
feather brush disdainfully round as much of the 
frame as she could reach. 

No — not in the least your style, Maude.” 

‘‘ Give me a bit of fresh color, Mr. Roberts, 
give me a face you ain’t afraid to touch with soap 
and water.” 

Give us, in short, the ‘ bowty doo dabble.’ ” 

Precisely,” the young woman agreed with a 
quite creditable air of acquaintance with the term. 

‘‘ And yet from the hupper succle, Maude, 
there’s a fine heffect; the figure is still magnifi- 
cent.” 

Oh, come now, Mr. Roberts — ^you know as 


The Courtesy Curtain 3 

well as I do that that’s stays. If I paid three 
guineas a pair ’’ 

If you paid thirty guineas a pair,” he broke 
in with authority, you wouldn’t look like that.” 

“ And who wants to look like that, pray ? That 
figure isn’t everybody’s money, let me tell you; 
if you arsked me I’d say it’s a deal more suited 
to a serpent than a woman — ^wriggle and slither 
and glide — ugh ! times out of number she’s given 
me the jumps with her sneaky comings in and 
goings out, and you might say ' goings on,’ ” she 
added with an inflection of malice, and not be 
far out.’' 

The serpent,” replied the imperturbable one, 
‘‘ ’as always hexercised a spell, Maude, on my 
himagination; she hexercises a spell, and deny it I 
can’t in common fairness to the woman.” 

You’re too much in the theater, Mr. Roberts 
— that’s the long and short of it. It’s them red 
lights. Why, some of them chorus girls (as they 
call themselves) are turned forty to my knowl- 
edge, and there you see ’em skippin’ about like lit- 


4 The Sinking Ship 

tie lambs. You ain’t taken ’er tea in at seven of 
a morning, Mr. Roberts. I tell you it’s all flum- 
mery.” 

‘‘ Some of it’s flummery, Maude, but some of 
it’s — what shall I say now ? ” 

‘^Well, the papers talks of genius,” the girl 
admitted slowly, as though compelled towards the 
reminder by something dominating in the pictured 
eyes above her; but what is genius when all’s 
said and done? ” 

The footman raised a pair of well-tended hands 
in fervent expostulation. 

Don’t talk of genius my dear ; a genius is a 
pusson as lies in bed all mornin’, rests in the 
hafternoon, and gets lively towards teatime; it 
turns night into day and day into night; if it’s a 
man it wears it’s ’air long, and if it’s a woman it 
prefers it short; it heats when other folks is 
sleepin’ and sleeps when they’re heatin’, and it 
isn’t to be counted on hunder hany circumstances 
whatsoever ; what it says to-day it contradicts to- 
morrow, and as to hopenin’ doors to visitors, there 


The Courtesy Curtain 5 

ain’t nothin’ to go by, not kerridges nor clothes, 
nor yet titles; you turns orf a little dowdy, hall 
paint and wrinkles, and gets the sack; you lets 
hin a duchess and gets your ’ead blown orf, before 
the lady as like as not. Don’t talk of geniuses; 
they’ve been the bane of my life; there’s no hac- 
countin’ for ’em, no trustin’ ’em, no pleasure in 
working yourself to death for ’em.” 

Well, then, what do you sit starin’ at ’er for? 
She’s a genius. Why don’t you clear out instead 
of talking of spells and such-like rubbish?” 

There’s the master to consider.” 

The master ? Why, he’s the bigger genius 
of the two to my thinking. Look at that there 
pile of halbums — twice as big as ’ers; speaks for 
itself.” But the footman shook an obstinate 
head. 

That’s only because there’s more woman fools 
in London than men fools. The master a genius ? 
Not a bit of it; the master’s a gentleman, Maude, 
a gentleman through and through. You watch 
’im come into a room. I couldn’t do it in better 


6 


The Sinking Ship 


style myself with hall my years of training. You 
watch hm ’elp hmself at table; no grabbing no 
beastly fuss, but — 'e always gets the best of 
heverything. Same with ’is clothes; no joolry, no 
flash, but there ain’t a better turned-out man in 
this town, though I says it that shouldn’t, seein’ 

that I valet him. Yes, take ’im hall in hall ” 

but the quotation was interrupted by the inop- 
portune entrance of Mr. Story, the butler, and the 
quoter scrambled to his feet, groping wildly at the 
lid of the coal-box by way of explaining his pres- 
ence in the room if not his attitude of relaxation. 
Story was of the good bow-window type of do- 
mestic, with a whiskered face, pale, ponderous 
and puffy; he crossed the room and laid a bundle 
of papers and letters on the desk beside his mas- 
ter’s chair and he looked sternly from the man 
to the girl; then, without comment, he ran a fat 
forefinger along the ebony case of the grand piano 
and submitted it to the inspection of the now ob- 
trusively pink Maude. 

“ Well, Mr. Story, I can’t do heverything at 


The Courtesy Curtain 7 

once, not 'avin’ two pairs of ’ands; if you’d wait 
till a-body was through before breakin’ hout in 
this way with your complaints and your hobjec- 
tions and your hinsiniations it ’ud be fairer.” 

If I waited till you were through, Miss Pert, 
I’d be in my grave.” 

“ Well, I don’t know as hanybody wants to 
keep you hout of your grave,” the girl muttered, 
to the delight of the retreating Roberts, but Mr. 
Story, who was uncomfortably aware of his own 
weakness in the art of repartee, feigned inatten- 
tion and contented himself with altering the ar- 
rangement of the room with a fine air of patience. 

** The fact is,” he observed judicially, you’re 
too young for the place, Maude, and so I’ve said 
from the first.” 

“ That’s better than being too old,” she snapped, 
and retired under cover of the retort. 

Left to himself, the man’s expression altered — 
it became solicitous, almost tender; his touch upon 
the articles he fingered smacked of reverence and 
always he appeared to listen with the anxiety of a 


8 The Sinking Ship 

faithful dog for the sound of a footstep from out- 
side. 

But when, presently, the door reopened to ad- 
mit a woman, it was plain that she was not the 
bright and particular star on this limited horizon, 
though Vanda Conquest — more generally known 
perhaps under her stage name of Vanda Fane — 
looked quite remarkable enough to pose as a 
luminary. Her form at all events endorsed the 
eulogy of her footman; — full and fine, obedient 
from earliest youth to the laws of mental as well 
as physical culture, it seemed perfectly adapted to 
define the values of expression and repression. 
Instinct with vitality to her finger-tips, she was 
also instinct with the determination to control the 
output of that same fund of vitality. To old 
Story, to young Roberts, to her world in gen- 
eral, she was compelling rather than dear, the 
puzzle rather than the idol. But as she came 
slowly forward with a shiver of her long, loose, 
brown draperies, as she reached the pool of sun- 
light in the middle of the room, the radiance even 


The Courtesy Curtain 9 

of the puzzle appeared to evaporate a little. The 
eye of a connoisseur would have lost some of its 
ecstasy, have wandered furtively to the portrait 
on the wall, for in the painter’s model the colors 
had begun to run, to fade, to be replaced, alas, 
by makeshift ones. The face, with its small, fine 
features, had been carefully tinted with pink; the 
thick hair, parted down the middle and curled 
.loosely about the neck and perfect ears, showed 
a heterogeneous collection of shades, ranging 
from amber to a dusky red ; the lashes and brows 
were black — ^just a degree too black — and the 
long, red-brown eyes wore at the moment an 
expression both sullen and inert — ^the early-morn- 
ing look of one who, like a cat, takes her pleasure 
in the night-season. And as she stood facing 
thus the portrait of twenty years ago, this same 
critical eye would have found yet another flaw, 
for the oval curve, indicative of youth, had been 
disturbed at that most fatal spot immediately 
below the cheekbone; the face had fallen a trifle, 
though the lost line of beauty had been recaptured 


lo The Sinking Ship 

almost at once and ran in a fine, bold sweep from 
chin to throat, from throat to shoulder and on and 
through the whole vibrant, grandly-molded body. 
For a minute or two she stood blinking rather 
stupidly at the traitorous sunlight, then, with a 
frown, she moved into the bow-window, lowered 
the blind, shook out the heavy, damask curtains 
of rose brocade, pushed a chair into the circle of 
tempered light that filtered through them, and 
seated herself with the grace and deliberation of 
the practised poser. And now the picture had 
undergone a second transformation. It was pre- 
cisely as though a clever artist had passed a 
sponge over a too crude water-color. The hair 
now showed bronze-like, the face pale, the mouth 
a satisfying scarlet — all effect of waste had disap- 
peared, or rather been absorbed into one of pic- 
turesque melancholy. She sat very still, her eyes 
upon the carpet, and the old man watched her with 
mingled admiration and distress; more than once 
he opened his mouth to address her, but closed it 
again and it was not until the door reopened that 


The Courtesy Curtain ii 

the tension, under which he so obviously labored, 
was relaxed. To the master of the house he 
turned with a quite pathetic air of devotion, hur- 
rying forward to give a last turn to the angle 
of the chair upon the hearth, to rearrange, 
for the tenth time, the papers on the actor’s 
table. 

Adrian Conquest was some years older than 
his wife, but he still possessed all the smooth and 
pleasing characteristics of youth. His features 
were perhaps too aggressively regular, but even 
this questionable defect had been redeemed by the 
bright and humorous quality of the eye, while the 
thin-lipped, shaven mouth had learnt, like Vanda’s 
lithe body, the value of pliancy. He was famous 
on the boards for his facial work, for the delicacy 
of the impressions he could convey with what ap- 
peared the minimum of effort. 

Morning, Vanda. Story, you old reprobate, 
you were an hour behind time with my shaving- 
water.” 

“ Well, sir — ^yes, I did presume to give orders. 


12 


The Sinking Ship 


A first night you know, sir — the strain, and you 
sleeping like a baby/’ 

His master laughed, the typical stage laugh, 
which was at once a pardon and a caress to the 
servant, and an invitation to his wife to share the 
atmosphere of gaiety and good-humor — an invita- 
tion to which she responded by a sarcastic lift of 
the short, upper lip. 

With a slight shrug he turned to his writing- 
table and picked up the topmost of the pile of 
daily papers. 

“ And what’s the verdict below stairs. Story ? 
I always begin with the basement, you know.” 

“ Just as usual, sir, only a little more so.” 

The laugh came from the woman this time, but 
it was drowned by her husband’s cheery voice. 

‘‘ Another walk over, eh ? ” 

“Why, of course, sir; best thing you’ve ever 
put on.” 

“ I seem to have heard that remark before,” 
Vanda observed, and the butler turned to her 
with pathetic disregard of any irony. “Yes, 


The Courtesy Curtain 13 

ma’am, it was a pretty general remark last night — 
in our part of the theater — the dresses that won- 
derful, and the moonlight in act two ” but she 

interrupted him with scant ceremony. 

‘‘ It was an excellent moon, I’ll allow, but there 
was an even more excellent one out in the street 
to be seen for nothing. Don’t tell me the public 
pays to see a fine counterfeit of the moon.” 

‘‘No, ma’am, of course not; but there was 
you, ma’am, beautiful as a picture.” 

“A picture! Yes, to be sure; but there again 
we’ve a rival. What of the Tate Gallery ? Hun- 
dreds of pictures, the best in the land, and 
nothing to pay, unless it’s a penny for your 
umbrella.” 

“ Well, ma’am, there was the story, such a 
pretty tale of love and valor. It brought the tears 
to my eyes every minute.” 

“ Tales of love I ” she mocked lightly. “ But 
there’s the library. Story; for twopence a week 
you’re cordially invited to cry your eyes out.” 

Nonplused he looked for succor, but only to 


14 The Sinking Ship 

find his master immersed in the dramatic column 
of the Times. 

‘‘ It was a great night, ma'am,” he said, with 
the obstinacy of little Wilhelmina of poetic fame. 
” Folks were turned away by the dozen, and we 
were packed that tight Fd a job to breathe.” 

‘‘ Full ! By Jove ! yes,” Conquest put in cheer- 
ily, changing his paper. Lawson's in the sev- 
enth heaven of satisfaction. Packed, Vanda, 
from stalls to gallery, and could have been filled 
twice over, and just listen to this: ‘ Seldom has 
Miss Fane given us a more finished and charming 
representation of sweet, English girlhood. In the 
line she has now for so many years been steadily 
pursuing we do not hesitate to say she is without 
a rival, and, if that line runs into no very mys- 
terious channel of thought, we are not disposed to 
cavil. The problem-play and the femme incom- 
prise flourish elsewhere; in this pretty and com- 
fortable theater one can be assured of finding 
recreation confined well within the bounds of good 
taste. As for Mr. Conquest, he is younger, hand- 


The Courtesy Curtain 


IS 


somer, than twenty years ago, and infinitely more 
polished. Can one say more ? ’ etc., etc. Sounds 
about right; and they’re all much the same: 'A 
big success’; ‘an undoubted success’; ‘quite as 
successful as anything of its kind’; ‘the suc- 
cess of the season ’ ; ‘ dainty in the extreme ’ ; 
‘lavishly put on’; ‘admirably portrayed’” — he 
picked a sentence here and there from his pile, and 
to each Story nodded an eager, almost a joyous 
agreement. 

“ Just what I said, sir — just what we all said 
downstairs, sir. The public knows — the public 
won’t be put off with trash; but there’s my front- 
door bell, and that man Roberts is as deaf as a 
post.” 

He hurried off, his bearing almost jaunty, his 
last look — thrown towards the figure in the win- 
dow — one of defiance. As the door closed behind 
him Conquest began to read again, ignorant of, or 
else indifferent to, that sullen glance with which 
his wife regarded him. 

“ ‘ It is impossible to find a flaw in last night’s 


1 6 The Sinking Ship 

representation. Lovely women and brave men 
pass before the eye in delicious garments and har- 
monious groups; one can enjoy the performance 
as one enjoys an expensive cigar, with no qualms 
as to its later disagreement with one’s constitution. 
All who seek the theater for recreation only will 
appreciate Mr. Conquest’s latest venture; a kind 
bachelor uncle seeking to amuse a schoolgirl niece, 
a shy wooer, anxious to prosper his romantic 
cause, could do no better than visit this delightful 
theater where, for so many years, we have been 
treated to the fantasy of life as it might have 
been, never has been, and never will be. But who 
wants sordid reality in leisure hours? Let us be 
grateful for illusion ’ What are you laugh- 

ing at?” 

‘‘ At you. But never mind — read me some 
more; read me the one you dropped into the 
waste-paper basket so unobtrusively.” 

“ With pleasure,” he said, equably, stopping to 
secure the sheet in question. ‘‘ I rather like a lit- 
tle of their satire myself — shows they’ve been 


The Courtesy Curtain 17 

roused. Let’s see — ^yes — here we are : ' There 

have been so many thorns of late among the roses 
of the stage that it would perhaps be hardly tactful 
to complain of last night’s flowery production; the 
flowers, too, were so perfect of their kind — they 
were offered with so much grace and generosity, 
and yet — with shame we own it — the invitation to 
siesta scarcely seemed opportune. We had a 
sense of being put to sleep on a narcotic a degree 
too mild to do the trick. To be sure we were re- 
galed at intervals by . pretty bursts of passion, but 
it was toy-passion; we were treated to the occa- 
sional murder of a villain — the discomfiture of a 
libertine — but these excesses were committed with 
one hand, so to speak, tied behind the back and 
the other half smothered in Honiton lace; we 
yawned — it was ungrateful, but, alas, unavoid- 
able; we came away with the uncomfortable and 
unkind impression of having taken part in a 
Barmecide Feast.’ Oh, what awful rot ! ” 

He pitched the condemnatory article aside and 
turned to find her crossing the room. 


i8 The Sinking Ship 

‘‘ It isn’t rot,” she said, “ it’s true — it’s some- 
thing we’ve got to face.” 

It’s the blues,” he amended, as she took the 
arm of his chair; ‘‘they’ve never failed us after 
a new production. Let ’em out, dear; it soothes 
you and it don’t worry me.” 

“ Does anything ever worry you, Adrian? ” 

“ Not that I know of.” 

“ And you’re nearly forty-nine.” 

“ Hush, hush ! the walls have ears.” 

“ And you’re not afraid of those ears — that’s 
the trouble ; you don’t care, you don’t change, you 
don’t age. Look up there at our two portraits.” 

“ What’s the matter with them? ” 

“ Nothing. There was nothing the matter with 
us — with me — when they were painted; but now 
— ^look, look — I’m a caricature. No, don’t deny 
it — it’s impossible to deny it.” 

“ Then I won’t. I’ll take the picture down and 
have you repainted.” 

“ Never — never; that picture is my consolation 
as well as my torment, for I was once like that — 


The Courtesy Curtain 19 

I was once greater than that; the painter used 
to drop his head upon his hand and groan because 
— because there wasn’t a color in his box that 
would express my buoyancy; but he caught some- 
thing, he preserved something — something that 
these men ” — she struck the bundle of newspapers 
viciously — “ would take away.” 

‘‘ What am I to say, Vanda, to all this? ” 

Say what you think,” she begged with sud- 
den tenderness, say what you really think, not 
just what’s likely to be soothing.” 

I’m afraid I think this scene unnecessary. Ac- 
cording to general opinion we’ve made another 
hit — a hit quite good enough to run the season.” 

“ And when the season’s run ? ” 

Sufficient, dearest, unto the day ” 

“ No,” she broke in impetuously; that’s where 
your common-sense fails. The piece might run 
the season, but it would be a la^t run for 
us.” 

‘‘ Vanda!” 

‘^Adrian, there was a threat in every one of 


20 The Sinking Ship 

those notices, and you can't, or you won’t, see 
them. There you sit as you used to sit when that 
picture was taken, line for line the same, hand- 
some and smug, for all the world as though but 
a single decade of years had gone over you. What 
does it mean? It frightens me, this evasion of 
common law. Why are you never ill ? Why are 
you never cross? You’re close to me, and yet 
you’re an utter stranger — you’ve always been a 
stranger; the love I gave you long ago comes 
back to me at moments like an unopened letter — 
it hasn’t been received. You don’t receive any- 
thing but your day’s rations. No, it’s no use try- 
ing to hush me up. I’ve smoldered a long time. 
I’m going to have some sort of an eruption. I’ll 
show you something.” 

She re-crossed the room to rummage in an 
escritoire, and when she returned she had a crum- 
pled newspaper of ancient appearance in her 
hand. 

“ This was written a few months before our 
marriage. ‘ Miss Fane is an erratic, undeveloped 


The Courtesy Curtain 21 

creature, but in her refusal to toe the line one 
seems to read a promise of that quality which, for 
want of a better term, we christen genius. As a 
child-actress she earned an enviable reputation, 
but it is a well-known fact that these precocious 
triumphs seldom survive the bud, and it is with 
unfeigned pleasure that we remark in this case a 
tendency to robust development. If Miss Fane 
has still a great deal to learn, we fancy she has 
also a great deal to teach, and we sincerely hope 
that the spirit of the times — which might be in- 
terpreted as the spirit of policy — will not be per- 
mitted to woo this quite remarkable young person 
into the primrose path.’ 

You know as well as I do,” she added fiercely, 
that I was wooed into it, for you were the 
wooer, and last night we reached the culminating 
point of our disgrace. That treacly story of life, 
that travesty of existence, makes me feel sick, 
though Fve been steadily educated down to it. 
But to talk of success — to swallow those journal- 
istic satires without a qualm; to set up Story — 


22 


The Sinking Ship 


Story and his servants' hall — as a bulwark to the 
fallacy — I’ve not come down to that. Why, there 
isn’t a reviewer of the lot who hasn’t his dig at 
us; I only wonder they’d the patience and the 
kindness to do it so gently. I’ve been cramped by 
you and that ridiculous manager of yours till I’m 
no more than a specialist in triviality, until I’m the 
butt of every pressman in town, the secret scorn of 
realist and idealist alike. No — don’t move — I 
haven’t finished — I’ve only just begun.” 

This is quite the worst attack of nerves, my 
dear Vanda, that we’ve enjoyed together. I’m at 
a loss how to treat it.” 

There’s only one way in which you never 
treat my moods ? ” 

‘‘ And what may that be ? ” 

With sincerity. Try it for once on me and on 
the occasion.” 

But, my dear girl ” 

But, my dear, blind, deaf man, everybody 
understands the position except you and your be- 
loved Lawson. Even Story understands it. 


The Courtesy Curtain 23 

though he’ll die gladly with a lie on his lips.” 

“ But the reviews — read ’em for yourself, 
Vanda.” 

‘‘ I have read them while you were sleeping like 
a baby. I know — I tell you I know only too well 
— what I’m talking about — ^what they'll be talking 
about in a week or two. My ‘ finished study,’ my 
‘ sweet gowns,’ my ‘ pretty movements ’ — bah ! 
they once spoke of something besides polish ; they 
were carried out of the beaten track of their stock 
phrases and praises; they argued over me and 
round me and at me; they didn’t lacquer me with 
a coat of satiric approval; they didn’t suggest, 
with all due deference, I should go this way or 
that; they followed the lead of that undeveloped 
spirit of genius with more or less appreciation. 
‘ Seldom has Miss Fane given us a more dainty 
and gracious performance.’ Oh, I understand the 
verdict, though it’s so admirably non-committal. 
These men know their business and, what’s more, 
they perform it with decency.” 

‘‘ Let me remind you,” he said, with a rare 


24 The Sinking Ship 

touch of impatience, ‘‘that there were five cur- 
tains to each act.” 

“ Courtesy curtains, Adrian. Do you suppose 
I can’t distinguish between courtesy and enthusi- 
asm? Have I never tasted bread to be deceived 
by the stone? There were five proofs of the 
truth of what I’m telling you — that the public and 
its mouthpieces have a sense of decency, even a 
sense of gratitude. They don’t bury us the mo- 
ment the breath goes out of our bodies; they 
allow a period for tears, for lying-in- state, they 
cover us with flowers, they honor us with kind and 
pitiful looks, they talk and they write of ‘ the 
great dead,’ ‘ the good dead.’ I died last night, or 
they think I did, and I’m being treated to my fine 
funeral, to my wreaths and tributes, to my five 
curtains; to-night there will be four, to-morrow 
three; soon, very soon, there will be empty 
benches, the mourners will go home, having done 
their duty, and we two shall be left in the grave- 
yard. You won’t mind, you’ll find it quite a com- 
fortable sleeping-place; but I’m not an Indian 


The Courtesy Curtain 25 

slave to be burnt alive with your dead body; Tm 
not for the graveyard yet, Fm for escape; there's 
a line of retreat, there's just one line of re- 
treat." 

Well, my dear? " 

** Well," she mocked, “ is that all you've got 
to say ? " 

‘‘ Not quite. I may be a paralytic of sorts, but 
let me remind you Fm not an unkind or malicious 
paralytic. There's no occasion for that look of 
enmity." 

“ No, no. Forgive me, Adrian; Fm half mad 
with inner revolt and fear, and if you were to re- 
fuse me this last chance, if you were to talk — to 

let Lawson talk of expense " She stopped, 

eyeing him with anxiety. 

‘‘ Ah, I begin to see daylight. You're paving 
the way for a rather drastic remedy — a new pro- 
duction, eh ? Have you any idea what that affair 
of last night is going to figure out at ? " 

“ I know we can't afford to play it often," she 
retorted. 


26 The Sinking Ship 

But there’s really nothing — nothing whatever 
in our line.” 

She followed his glance to the writing-table, 
where a pile of manuscript was visible. 

Our line has failed. We must try another.” 

‘‘ You’ve found something, Vanda? ” 

She nodded, still with a nervous eye on him. 

‘‘ And what’s the name of your selection? ” 

“ ‘ The Sinking Ship.’ ” 

Not an ingratiating title,” he commented, 
after what seemed to her a long interval of time. 

“ We’ve not an ingratiating tale to tell, Adrian. 
Idylls are played out. We’re no longer children; 
we’re no longer young and sportive and gallant, 
and the public’s tired of hearing us declare we 
are; it’s tired of our fancy dresses and scenic ef- 
fects. We can’t hold it any longer by pretenses, 
but we might hold it by the truth. The truth 
isn’t much to look at, and it isn’t easy to express, 
but it might be made interesting; it’s been made 
interesting — extraordinarily interesting.” 

Again she crossed the room and took the top- 


The Courtesy Curtain 27 

most manuscript. ‘‘ YouVe read it, I suppose? ’’ 
“ Perfunctorily. It’s the work of a boy, of 
course, and lamentably deficient in the knowledge 
of stagecraft.’’ 

“ Hadden Renshaw,” she murmured. “ The 
name isn’t quite unfamiliar. Can you place it ? ” 
“ Only son of a bigwig in the city,” he said 
carelessly — “ a product of young Oxford, letting 
off steam; broken loose from his family, I heard, 
on account of these high flights of opinion.” 

Ah, that accounts, Adrian. There’s the bite 
of sacrifice in his work, and I believe in him. 
You’ve got to believe in him too, for he’s our last 
chance. Last night that theater was an arena. I 
looked round it, and I saw what the despairing 
gladiator sees when he lifts his torn body from 
the dust and sues for mercy — all the thumbs were 
down!' 

“ Dearest, isn’t this a trifle theatrical ? ” 

Well, and aren’t we face to face with a crisis ? 
I’ve got to stoke up if I’m to persuade you to 
take the last tide at the ebb.” 


28 The Sinking Ship 

“ Lawson will make a devil of a row, and it’s 
a risky venture at the best. Sure there’s not a 
personal element about ? ” 

What do you mean? ” 

‘‘ Well, my recollection of the stuff’s a bit hazy, 
but isn’t it a sort of cap suited, we’ll say, to a 
woman past her teens ? ” 

“ Suited, in point of fact, to me, Adrian. It is; 
but whether there’s anything beyond coincidence 
in the championship. I’m not prepared to say. 
I’m as much at sea as you are. It’s a puzzle. 
He certainly doesn’t do his worshiping (if it is 
personal worship) from the stalls; I must have 
spotted him. On the whole I’m inclined to think 
it’s abstract defense. He’s fighting for a prin- 
ciple; he’s ranging himself on the side of an 
ideal.” 

‘‘ And that ideal? ” 

‘‘ Is, of course, the immortality of art, the in- 
consequence of time and time’s weapons, the 
restoration of a lost or vitiated point of view. 
All I know is that I shall give you and myself no 


The Courtesy Curtain 29 

peace till it’s in rehearsal, and probably very little 
then.” 

“ In that case, my dear, Fll make a virtue of 
necessity.” 

“ You’ll stand up to Lawson, and at once? ” 
We’d better interview the young man first. 
Will you write or shall I?” But even as she 
mused upon the question there came a tap upon 
the door, followed by the entrance of Story. 

Very sorry, ma’am,” he began in an aggrieved 
tone, I’ve said ‘ not at ’ome,’ persistent and con- 
tinual, but 'ere ’e is again. Seven times in all, 
sir. It’s about a play — one of them no doubt ” — 
he pointed a disdainful finger. “ Wants a hinter- 
view, and won’t take a ' no.’ Perhaps you’d al- 
low me to tell the young gentleman as we’ve now 
no call for new work this season.” 

‘‘ Tell him instead that, seven being the lucky 
number, we’re willing to see him.” 

The order came from Vanda, and the old man 
looked at his master with a blend of incredulity 
and appeal, but a light gesture of dismissal dis- 


30 The Sinking Ship 

posed of any hopes he might have entertained con- 
cerning contradiction. Very slowly he turned 
and left the room, very slowly he made his way 
down the broad staircase. He put a trembling 
hand upon the banisters, for he was afraid. He 
was afraid of the pert housemaid, whose tongue 
could outrun his own; he was afraid of the foot- 
man, whose talents as a valet brought him consid- 
eration; he was afraid, horribly afraid, of the 
visitor in the hall below. These people were the 
young — the new regime. He didn’t carry the 
argument of his distress very far, he was too ig- 
norant; he only felt that unheil crossed the 
threshold of the house he loved, and he could 
only voice his inward protest by announcing ‘‘ Mr. 
Hadden Renshaw ” with funereal solemnity. 


CHAPTER II 


WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR? 

Vanda had resumed her place in the window; 
once more she sat encircled by that protective arc 
of rosy light. She extended her arms, bare to 
the elbow, along the black, oaken arms of the 
chair, and her fingers rested upon the heads of a 
pair of prehistoric animals. 

It was an effective setting, and she watched 
carefully for traces of its effect; but Renshaw, 
when on guard, was no mean adept himself in the 
art of concealing emotion. He found her and 
bowed to her with a deliberation that might de- 
note self-possession, or the desire to hide his lack 
of it. He took the seat his host rose to offer, and 
altered its position sufficiently to allow of a clear 
view of husband and wife. The latter decided 
that silence must be her first cue, and Conquest, 

always quick to catch and act upon the lighter 
31 


32 The Sinking Ship 

varieties of intrigue, took upon himself the onus 
of introduction. 

“ Your ring at the bell, Mr. Renshaw, was 
singularly opportune. We were discussing, at the 
moment, the play you were kind enough to submit 
to us, and I may tell you that we are both im- 
pressed. It’s smartly written, and, what’s more, 
it deals with a theme which, though not precisely 
original, has never been handled quite in your 
fashion. Still, as you’re well aware, appreciation 
is cheap and production is confoundedly ex- 
pensive.” 

‘‘ A production like your last must always prove 
expensive,” the visitor rejoined coolly; the pub- 
lic is sick of a sugar and water diet.” 

“ You’re fresh from Oxford I’m told.” 

‘‘ I’ve taken my science degree, sir; but don’t 
imagine this is university ferment.” 

‘‘What? It’s individual ferment, is it? Well, 
we want individuality, provided it’s the right 
kind; but there’s only one right kind, and ninety 
and nine wrong. As for our sugar and water, 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 33 

let me remind you that for a long time it’s been 
swallowed without a murmur.” 

“ For a very long time.” 

‘‘ You mean, Mr. Renshaw? ” 

‘‘ I mean that in twenty years many changes 
take place, many fashions alter, many playthings 
get relegated to the shelf.” 

‘‘You’d relegate us to the shelf?” the elder 
man inquired with unimpaired good-humor. 

“ On the contrary, I’d take you down again.” 

“ Uncommonly kind. But suppose I were to 
tell you that I’ve no objection to the shelf so long 
as it’s fairly comfortable.” 

“ But surely — surely ” the boy stammered 

— stopped, and his dark eye wandered towards the 
window. 

“ Surely what?” 

“ Surely the shelf is a derogatory place, even 
if it isn’t actually uncomfortable.” 

“ Oh ! derogatory. They say that of the music 
halls. Personally I can’t be bothered with these 
fine shades of distinction.” 


34 The Sinking Ship 

'' The music halls/' echoed his visitor, and 
again he stopped, again his tell-tale eye sought the 
window and the still figure there, giving the actor 
time to send a glance of his own in the same 
direction — ^the I told you so ” glance of the con- 
firmed cynic. 

You don't approve of the ‘ halls ' ? " 

“ I don't approve their competing with legit- 
imate drama." 

Competing? Bless you, there's no competi- 
tion ; we don't get a look in. In another ten years 
they’ll have swamped us." 

“ Scandalous ! " But Conquest only laughed. 

Call 'em a row of green bay-trees if you like, 
but that won't stop the flourishing. No, our only 
chance is to cave in early, to accept the olive 
branch of amalgamation. I'm willing enough. 
Fifteen minutes a night instead of three mortal 
hours — a profession in a nutshell, so to speak. 
But, alas, such a settlement isn't for the likes of 
us." He finished with a shrewd look at the young 
man's indignant face. 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 35 

‘‘ 1 should hope not.” 

Come, Mr. Renshaw, this is prejudice.” 

'' It’s a prejudice, sir, that I think — no. I’m 
sure — others share with me.” 

For the third time his eye played truant, and 
the other, pressing home what he recognized for 
an advantage, turned to Vanda and tossed the ball 
lightly into her hands. 

That’s true,” he observed ingenuously. You 
must talk to my wife; she won’t allow herself to 
fit into the modern scheme of things; which brings 
us back to your drama. Frankly it’s beyond me, 
but it seems it’s not beyond her. Get her to talk; 
she can talk when she fancies it worth her 
while.” 

But for a full minute she would give him no 
more, in answer to his first straight look at her, 
than an absent and speculative smile, under which 
the blood in his young face began to stir. 

It was — so she paused to muse luxuriously — 
just the face with which a wanton fancy might 
play indefinitely and with profit as well as pleas- 


36 


The Sinking Ship 


ure; lean, dark and virile, shaven and pale, now 
almost harsh and now quite beautiful beneath the 
play of moods various in all probability as her 
own. 

The teeth were excellent, the nose nicely shaped 
for sticking in the air when a latent tendency to 
hauteur came uppermost; he was a cross — or so 
she decided — between the ascetic and the poet, 
with a liberal dash of the egoist. Her glance 
dropped lower to take stock of the fine steely 
frame — the frame of an athlete allowed to rust 
a little in the laboratory, but not to stoop or 
flop. 

She approved him, and behind the approval 
lay the conviction that, not coincidence, but some- 
thing stronger and warmer lay behind that choice 
of an avenue for his talents. He was a stranger 
to her, but she was none to him. 

‘‘ I don’t believe,” she said at last, ‘‘ that Mr. 
Renshaw needs to be told my opinions or very 
many of my thoughts; I think that somehow he 
has possessed himself of the key to, let us say, 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 37 

my subjective self, and pilfered all that may be of 
value.” 

‘‘ You mean that you admit — ^you under- 
stand ” 

“ Everything,” she exclaimed, the languor of 
her glance seeming to melt under the intensity of 
his. It would be of no use to dissemble. I 
don’t know for whom that wonderful shoe was 
made, but I do know that it fits me. Tell me 
where and when and how you came to write that 
truth stranger than any fiction? I’ve never seen 
your face before, and I know most of the faces of 
our habitues” 

‘‘ I was very young when I saw you first.” 

‘‘Yes?” The voice was inviting as a strain 
of love-music, and eagerly he responded to it, for- 
getful of the intruding third, forgetful of the 
properties of the rose-colored curtain, in the shel- 
ter of which she sat, forgetful of everything ex- 
cept the intoxicating fact that into her face the 
light was coming back as into a lamp newly 
lit. 


38 The Sinking Ship 

It was in such another piece as that of last 
night. You were smothered in gold tissue, but 
your eyes were tragic; they looked stormily out 
seeking a face that should reflect some under- 
standing of the position. I thought, ^ surely, 
surely, she must find mine, even though it’s only 
the face of a little boy’; but you never did. I 
was too insignificant. Over my head you 
called into space for that deliverer who never 
came.” 

‘‘ And you grew up, and you remembered, and 
still, still I looked over your head ? ” she ques- 
tioned, in some real bewilderment. 

“ Oh, I didn’t frequent the stalls; I didn’t fancy 
the company there, I’d like you to understand. 
I’m sure you do understand it isn’t a case of — 
of ” 

“ Calf-love ? ” she prompted, with a smile void 
of all offense. 

Exactly. Not being a case of calf-love, 
distance was an advantage. I sat a long way off, 
and I didn’t come often to the theater. I found 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 39 

I could work up my impressions better without 
the introduction of too many modern ones/^ 

“ And you took them, these first impressions, 
to Oxford with you ? 

“ That was nothing. But I brought them back 
again.” 

“ And carried them up, up, far from the mad- 
ding crowd, into a garret ? ” 

‘‘ Who told you that ? ” 

‘‘ My instinct, of course. It’s only in a garret, 
high up under the stars, that one preserves the 
sense of true proportion. In rooms like this ” — 
she shrugged eloquent disdain of her luxurious 
surroundings — there’s too much furniture, too 
little oxygen, too many flowers. So you burnt 
midnight oil and — I came to you. Oh, it’s no 
good pretending she’s fancy-bred, that woman of 
your story; she’s no greater and no less than 
myself; she is myself; it’s my wrongs she utters, 
it’s my revolt she portrays; and to think — to 
think at the eleventh hour rescue should come, 
and from a stranger!” 


40 


The Sinking Ship 


‘‘ A stranger ? Must you call me that ? ” 
There was reproach alongside the exultation in 
his bright and piercing eye. 

It’s for the last time, Hadden Renshaw.” 

At that lingering utterance of his name his eye- 
lids fell; only by momentary retreat could he 
hope to preserve the semblance of self-control, 
and over his head a glance of mutual congratula- 
tion and amusement was exchanged, for the actor, 
if dead to strong emotion, was still alive to ma- 
terial welfare, and could recognize in this im- 
pressionable youth a promising recruit to the 
cause at stake, if not exactly the saviour of it, 
that his wife was inclined to hail. It was as plain 
to him as to her that the champion fancied himself 
free of the common incentive, and that on this 
very ignorance Vanda could trade with profit, for 
well she knew when to raise a postulate and when 
to whisper to a man. 

“ I don’t need to tell you,” she resumed softly, 
“ that there’s an ancient and ineradicable blood- 
feud between such creatures as the heroine of last 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 41 

night’s trumpery tale and the woman you’ve 
chosen to rescue. I don’t need to tell you of my 
sufferings. The gold tissue, the jewels, that are 
put so lavishly into the shop-window, are taken 
from inside; it’s paying Peter at the expense, not 
of Paul, not of Lancelot or another, but of the 
King — the highest.” 

“ Then why, why didn’t you call to me sooner? 
I sent you that play weeks ago.” 

To his surprise, somewhat to his consternation, 
for his nerves were strung high, her gravity dis- 
solved, her face broke up into a smile; roguishly 
she looked past him at her husband. 

“ ‘ I have a partner — Mr. Jorkins,’ ” she 
quoted, and Conquest took up the tale in his turn. 

“ And I a manager, to pass the responsibility 
on to its true source, a person, Mr. Renshaw, 
quite incapable of seeing apparitions in a garret. 
This venture of ours will entail a battle royal, but 
it shall be fought, and, what’s more, it shall be 
won ! You have my promise.” 

“ There,” cried Vanda joyously, you’ve done 


42 The Sinking Ship 

what I failed to do, nailed him to a definite deci- 
sion; now we’re three to one, and Lawson may 
tear his hair — what there is left of it — when you 
interview him to-morrow.” 

‘‘ Must I interview him ? ” said Hadden, with 
the air of a person who has dropped from a great 
height and marvels to find his bones intact. “ I 
shouldn’t know what to say,” he went on, catching 
the lighter note, however, with something of re- 
lief. “ He’ll tell me the price of scenery and 
lighting, and I don’t care a jot about costs. He’ll 
be certain to want the curtain up when I want it 
down, and down when I want it up. Can’t I ex- 
plain my opinions to — to Mrs. Conquest, and 
can’t she enforce them on this circumscribed per- 
son in charge of the stage? ” 

You think he won’t dare to contradict and 
bully her? ” the actor inquired carelessly. ‘‘ You 
don’t know Lawson ; it takes something more than 
a strong individuality to worst him. But I’ll un- 
dertake to see him first — ^to take the edge off his 
objections.” 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 4^ 

“ And you must come again to-morrow/' 
Vanda put in, “when we’ll have a real business 
talk, with the plans all cut and dried.” 

The gods avert the omen,’ ” her husband 
put in with laughter; “cutting and drying are 
very much in old Lawson’s line, I’m afraid.” 

“ But he doesn’t believe in Lawson,” she inter- 
posed, with a return of gravity, “nor do I; no- 
body’ll believe in Lawson this day month if the 
rehearsals go as I mean them to go ; he’ll be wiped 
out along with other undesirable impediments to 
art. We believe in magic, Adrian, understand 
that; we take our stand on this exhibition of it. 
I’m to be exposed as an old woman — think of it ! 
— an old woman, wrinkled and ugly, threatened 
with disgrace and decay; then, before the public 
has done staring at the spectacle of me without so 
much as a dab of my war-paint, enter the genius, 
who waves his wand, and, hey presto ! the old hag 
has disappeared, or rather, the general and quite 
erroneous impression of an old hag has disap- 
peared, has been replaced by a belief quite as tre- 


44 The Sinking Ship 

mendous and far more salutary than the ancient 
belief in witchcraft, for it brings the dead to 
life; all the forms that have once held vitality — 
Cleopatra, Medusa, Undine, Helen of Troy, Car- 
men, and all the rest, legendary, fictional, his- 
torical, biblical — one and all are repossessed. 
Wherever imagination can set a match the fire is 
to burn again, and there^s to be no roping off, no 
limit, no truckling to the law; art is to out-herod 
Herod in its exercise of tyranny. Revolution, 
nothing less, is the dish we mean to set before the 
crowd ! 

And now there had come to the lamp its full 
influx of light. Glowing with enthusiasm, part 
real and part assumed, she seemed to radiate op- 
timism and seduction; but as the boy rose to his 
feet, following her own movement, she checked 
the impulse of his spirit of idolatry by a dramatic 
gesture of her white arm. 

No,'’ she said, with a ring of appeal subtly 
introduced into the imperious decree, “ you've 
come near enough for one day — ^too near quite to 


Will You Walk into My Parlor? 45 

please my vanity. Now you must go. I want to 
be alone — alone with that mysterious woman, 
myself, and yet not quite myself, that you've dis- 
covered. You must go. I won’t ring; you can 
find your way downstairs without Story’s escort. 
Story doesn’t love you; he’s the old man who 
wanted to go on saying, ‘Not at home.’ To- 
morrow, at the same time, Adrian ? ” 

“ A little earlier — say eleven thirty,” Conquest 
replied, looking at his watch, and, with a couple 
of bows, not quite so satisfactory as those pro- 
duced upon his entrance, the visitor took his de- 
parture. 

Pausing to furl his umbrella on the doorstep, he 
looked with brooding eyes into the Square gar- 
den, where the trees were already thick with 
foliage and musical with the chatter of innumer- 
able birds. So deep was his reverie that he failed 
to note the pulling-up of a hansom at the curb- 
stone before the house, and it was only when 
the two ladies who had dismounted from it be- 
gan to mount the steps that he became aware of 


46 The Sinking Ship 

their presence. The former of the two favored 
him with an ingratiating smile and bow, the other 
with a stare too innocent to be impudent ; but the 
young man was in no condition at the moment to 
draw deductions. With a mechanical movement 
to the left of their swinging skirts, and a mechan- 
ical lift of his hat, he passed them and turned 
sharp towards the West. 


CHAPTER III 


THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA 

And yet these two ladies were noteworthy, each 
in her own way, the one by virtue of ripe age 
worn with an air of jaunty defiance, the other 
by reason of the dispassion with which she car- 
ried her extreme youth. 

Mrs. Winchester was close on seventy, and 
for nearly forty years she had been involved in 
a hand-to-hand tussle with Time, Originally a 
blonde, she was resolved to remain a blonde to 
the end — to the rather bitter end. Her lashes, 
her complexion, her hair, her teeth, were all as 
good an imitation of Nature’s handiwork as mod- 
ern ingenuity could furnish, but to replace wasted 
tissues, to revitalize spent nerves, is more than 
even the beauty-doctor can achieve satisfactorily, 
and for all her efforts the lady, at close quarters, 

was startling rather than attractive. Her black 
47 


48 The Sinking Ship 

eyes flashed incessantly right and left or up and 
down; her claw-like fingers were always either 
on the fidget or the grab; her elaborate, white 
gown, with its high waist and embroidered 
ribands falling to the hem of the skirt her large 
chip-hat smothered in moss-roses and forget-me- 
nots, her filmy sunshade of cerulean blue, her 
multitude of dangling ornaments and chains, 
made her an object in the landscape that it was 
difficult to evade and that the handsome youth 
she had surprised upon her daughter’s doorstep 
should have contrived the feat, caused the poor 
soul a pang of torment. 

May I inquire the name of the young man 
so singularly wanting in manners ? ” she asked, 
sailing into the drawing-room in her most im- 
pressive manner. 

“ Name of Renshaw, Lydie.” 

Mrs. Winchester had long ago rebelled at the 
•term mother, and still more energetically at that 
of grandmother, so to Vanda, to Vanda’s daugh- 
ter, to the rank and file of the family acquaintance, 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 49 

she was known — and in many cases held up to 
ridicule — as Lydie. 

‘‘ And if it's not an impertinence to inquire 
further, might I know his business? Morning 
callers usually entail something more than small 
talk." 

His business," Adrian explained, not without 
malice, will interest you ; he has a virgin drama 
— that is, he had a virgin drama; it is now ours, 
or it will be ours in the course of the next few 
days." 

The old lady did precisely what was expected 
of her. She dropped, with an effect of utter 
prostration, into the most comfortable seat within 
reach. 

Are you quite mad ? " she gasped. 

Vanda says not; for myself Fm scarcely pre-~ 
pared to vouch." 

“ I might have guessed — I suppose I ought to 
have guessed," moaned his mother-in-law ; ‘‘ but 
it seemed so little to ask of Fortune or of you, 
Adrian. I might have guessed my triumph of 


50 The Sinking Ship 

last night would not be countenanced. From the 
moment of my entrance I felt myself in touch 
with the audience; and General Body tells me — 
we met him at the Stores, and I asked him in to 
lunch — he tells me it was the hit of the piece. I 
might have told him it doesn’t do to make hits 
of this sort in other people’s companies, even 
though the company belongs to your own daugh- 
ter and her husband. If I’d known I should have 
played that bit of comedy very differently. The 
dear General says it convulsed him, literally con- 
vulsed him, but little did he dream that he was 
laughing at my ruin.” 

Her sobs increased and her granddaughter 
came forward, in answer to a gesture, and loos- 
ened the long chiffon strings of her hat before 
removing it. She performed the action with ex- 
traordinary tenderness, murmuring the while in 
the jeweled ear. But the old lady was not yet 
ready for sympathy; she had a grievance to ride, 
and she flashed furious eyes upon the quiet woman 
in the window. 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 51 

“If there was policy in such an abrupt meas- 
ure I should say nothing, I should smother my 
own feelings. But when I know that the play is 
to be taken off, right in the face of popular inter- 
est and approval, because some ridiculous boy has 
persuaded Vanda to think him a genius, I con- 
fess my indignation rises. Fm not a fool; Fm 
as good a judge of a love-sick idiot as anybody. 
Why, I passed him on the doorstep, and he was 
so blinded by his infatuation that he couldn’t re- 
member even the common courtesies to which a 
lady is entitled — edged round my skirts as though 
there were germs in them. Sibyl, my glass of 
sherry.” 

The young girl left the room, and Lydie, find- 
ing nobody else disposed to play the comforter, 
roused herself to put some questions. 

“ When do you purpose producing this un- 
known person’s first effort ? ” 

“ Immediately. It will go into rehearsal in a 
few days.” 

“ And its name ? ” 


52 


The Sinking Ship 


‘‘ ' The Sinking Ship/ '' 

' The Sinking Ship ’ ! Oh, I might have 
guessed that too. I read the thing, and never, 
never have I come across anything so impossible, 
so depressing, so foredoomed to failure in all the 
years in which I’ve been before the public. Think 
of anybody coming from a good dinner to watch 
the spectacle of a dirty, worn-out old ship going 
down to the bottom of the sea ! ” 

‘‘ But it doesn’t go, Lydie. You can’t have 
read on to the end.” 

The unexpected interruption came from Sibyl 
standing in the doorway, with a glass balanced 
carefully in one hand. Her eyes were alight, 
her lips parted, there was a flush on her delicate 
cheek that had not been there before. Her 
father looked at her with sudden and unusual 
attention, and his wife looked quite as attentively 
at him. 

“Oh-ho!” said he; so you’ve been dipping 
into my play-books? I thought you took no 
stock of theater matter.” 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 53 

It was lying on the top, and I opened it the 
other day. It’s wonderful, it’s beautitful; it isn’t 
like the rest.” 

No,” he agreed absently, his eye moving with 
deliberation over her slight person. 

“ I should think it wasn’t,” Lydie broke in, 
waving off the glass of sherry with which the girl 
now came forward. “ It’s one of those neurotic 
effusions that a very young man in love with a 
middle-aged woman finds it a relief to throw off.” 

But Vanda was not listening to her mother’s 
caustic accusations, she was still staring at her 
husband with the* look of one awaiting a long- 
dreaded blow. The common occasion seemed to 
hold a kernel far from common, a kernel which 
the next moment would expose. Conquest, how- 
ever, spoke without any consciousness of thunder 
in the air. 

‘‘You’ve put an idea into my head, Sibyl; or 
rather, you’ve reminded me of an idea lying 
fallow there.” 


“ An idea about me, father ? ” 


54 


The Sinking Ship 


‘‘ Yes. Can't you guess it? " 

For a moment there was dead silence in the 
room, and it seemed to Vanda that the beat of 
her heart must arouse attention; but nobody 
looked her way. 

Fm to go on the stage." 

There was a loud explosion of protest, but it 
came from Lydie. 

“ Sibyl on the stage ! Now Fm sure of your 
insanity. Why, she’s as much idea of acting as 
my parasol! I never heard anything so pre- 
posterous or so selfish and inconsiderate in all my 
life! Pray, what am I to do if she’s off at all 
hours studying parts she’ll never have the spirit to 
play? Who’s to help me with my shopping and 
my letters ? Who’s to read to me and amuse me 
in my few short leisure hours ? She isn’t lively, 
as we all know, but she’s willing and good- 
natured, and I can’t possibly afford to pay a com- 
panion. But, as usual, Fm not to be considered. 
Fm only an old woman; it doesn’t matter if I go 
to the wall. Oh, I ought to be accustomed to it; 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 55 

but it's so hard to forget the days when my light- 
est whim was law, when it was thought an honor 
to fetch and carry for me. I try to forget, and I 
can't. And now to force this poor girl under the 
limelight to make a fool of herself! Surely, 
child, you must know your own limitations. What 
have you to say to this absurd idea ? " 

“ It's a question," said Conquest, before she 
could reply, “ of making the pot boil." 

Say, rather," shrieked the old lady, it's a 
question of making the reviewers boil ! " 

“ Are you afraid, Sibyl ? " 

“ No, father, not a bit." 

The disclaimer, void alike of vehemence or hesi- 
tation, only served further to inflame Lydie. 

“ Aren't you going to interfere ? " she de- 
manded, turning to her daughter. Don't tell 
me you're going to countenance this nonsense I " 
Vanda took time over her reply; she studied 
each of the three faces before her, and when she 
spoke her voice had a feline note often to be found 
in it when her faculties were most engaged. 


56 The Sinking Ship 

Why should I interfere ? She’ll make a 
pretty stage-ornament. She needn’t talk, you 
know; few of Mr. Renshaw’s women do, except 
the leading lady. It’s for you to decide, Sibyl; 
we’re not tyrants. You’ll get flowers and 
trinkets and chocolate and flattery from the young 
gentlemen in the stalls, and it must be poor fun 
waiting on Lydie all day long. If you’re sick of 
it, if you want change, now’s the time to speak, 
and we’ll fetch out the make-up box and see what 
we can do with you.” 

If she thought to discompose the girl she was 
to be disappointed. Sibyl seemed scarcely to 
hear; she was looking away, sideways, at a 
distant portion of the room, in a fashion Vanda 
knew well. 

“ Don’t you hear me ? ” she said sharply. 
“ Don’t stare into vacancy in that stupid way. 
Do you or don’t you want to go on the stage ? ” 

'' I don’t want to, but I will.” 

‘‘Of course you will. Where else should a 
daughter of ours go ? ” her father responded 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 57 

easily. “ You’ll like it well enough once the ice 
is broken; and, if I recollect rightly, there’s a 
part eminently fitted for a debutante/' 

Mrs. Winchester broke out into a veritable 
tirade, presenting relays of objection, to all of 
which he proffered the soft answer warranted to 
turn away wrath, but which, in this case, served 
rather to instil despair. And Vanda made no ef- 
fort to join the combat; she wove the two voices 
into a dolorous accompaniment of her own bitter 
and fearful thoughts. With somber eyes she 
looked at the cause of the disturbance, tracing it 
back to the point where, frail and embryonic, it 
had first touched her aristocracy. Sibyl was an 
only child, born in the first year of marriage, 
when her passion had been pretty evenly divided 
between art and a husband. At first the baby had 
been welcome, as were all extravagant demands to 
one of her immense vitality. It flattered her 
pride to defy common, human weakness; it was in- 
toxicating to brace one’s faculties to the ascent of 
a mountain commonly labeled inaccessible. She 


58 The Sinking Ship 

had served her two masters with enthusiasm, and 
it was not until the child began to evince traits of 
character very markedly her own that the 
mother’s satisfaction became touched with doubt. 
She became aware that, beyond a certain point, 
she was unable to influence the little girl ; that the 
eyes raised to her own seemed to pierce the glam- 
orous surface, seeking what she was afraid to 
christen. The lisping tongue broke gradually 
into expression, but the story was not the story 
of her own vain preconception. Little Sibyl took 
her life — that undemonstrative life her mother 
strove to call insignificant — from a source 
outside the dominion of the spoilt and brilliant 
actress. 

Nor was this the only crumpled rose-leaf in the 
luxurious couch. Her mother, left almost with- 
out resources, had for the last dozen years chosen 
to seek shelter both in the theater and in the house 
of her son-in-law. She had weathered a couple 
of marriages, divorce and widowhood; money 
and fame had flown through her fingers and 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 59 

away; she had, like too many of her happy-go- 
lucky order, made no provision for the rainy day. 
A good deal sadder, and perhaps a trifle wiser, 
she foisted herself upon Vanda, then in the glad 
possession of just such a reputation as she herself 
had enjoyed and dissipated. With characteristic 
Bohemian good-nature she had been taken in, but 
the protest, outwardly suppressed, burned fiercely 
within the daughter’s heart. 

It was indeed something more than a protest, 
for it seemed to her that, as the years passed, 
bringing decrease of life to her mother, increase 
to her child, she, Vanda, became more and more 
securely trapped between the devil and the deep 
sea; offspring to the one, creatress. of the other, 
she saw herself captive in a half-way prison house 
whose single door of exit she dared not even per- 
mit herself to examine very closely. Mrs. Win- 
chester stood for that dread bourne from which 
no traveler returns. In the pleasure-seeking, self- 
sodden old woman, at once immoral and ridic- 
ulous, she could not fail to recognize the natural 


6o 


The Sinking Ship 


end to those very ambitions that engrossed her- 
self; while, in the young girl, who stood so aloof 
from the influence of the house in which her life 
had been spent, she saw the deep sea of a condi- 
tion she was unable to fathom and afraid to ex- 
ploit. And now, for the first time, the fine, care- 
less eye of her husband was at attention; he too, 
it would seem, had detected secret possibilities in 
the silent and simple girl; he purposed to draw 
her out from her quiet corner and put the authen- 
ticity of that subdued claim to value to the test, 
Out of vague surmise, out of the friendly shadow 
of still unproven things, the enemy was about to 
be invoked, and by the one person who had stood 
to her imagination in a role other than sub- 
servient. Once more she became aware of what 
was being said — aware that Adrian, as usual, had 
worked his will, and with the minimum amount 
of effort. 

With the manuscript of the new play under his 
arm he was about to leave the room, but Lydie, 
with a last desperate burst of opposition, inter- 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 6i 

cepted him and laid forcible hands on the bone of 
contention. 

“ You're not to take it away till Fve had an- 
other look at it. As far as I could tell there was 
nothing, positively nothing, to suit me; but I 
fancy two or three of the minor parts could be 
cut out and their best lines given to the 
Marchioness of something or other. You must 
arrange an early interview for me with this young 
man. There’s one advantage about a novice and 
one only — he’s grateful to people of experience 
for hints and corrections.” 

But Conquest held tight to the book and to cer- 
tain opinions and intentions of his own. 

‘‘If I’m not much mistaken this beginner will 
be arbitrary; we shall have a job getting him to 
consider the question of alteration; and I’m not 
going to yield him to your tender mercies, Lydie. 
You won’t attend to Sibyl’s interests, and it’s 
these I want considered a little more. We can’t 
allow her to make her dehut in quite so tame a 
fashion as does his ingenue. Allow me.” 


62 


The Sinking Ship 


Deftly he freed the manuscript, nodded to his 
wife, and took his departure quite unmoved by 
Lydie's shriek of rage. Vanda, equally unmoved 
it would appear, drew a tall work- frame within 
reach and began to set stitches in an elaborate 
length of embroidery; on Sibyl, therefore, fell the 
task of consolation. She supported the old lady 
back to her comfortable chair; she presented, for 
the second time, the glass of sherry, and had the 
satisfaction of seeing it drained to the last drop; 
she listened patiently to a lecture on the selfish- 
ness of men in general and relatives in particular, 
and, when the influence of the wine began to 
work, when violence began to lose some of its 
impetus, she was quick to introduce ideas cal- 
culated, as she knew by experience, to turn the 
volatile mind of her patient. 

It was exactly like comforting a fractious child, 
for it was the opening of the parcels purchased 
that morning that eventually succeeded in restor- 
ing calm; and presently Lydie was happily em- 
ployed in discussing what should be done with 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 63 

lengths of flowered ribbon and scraps of lace; in 
trying the effect of two or three spangled hair- 
ornaments — taken on approval — against her corn- 
colored head; in sampling French sweetmeats 
and various kinds of perfume; then, recollecting 
that the General (on whom she had definite and 
rather desperate matrimonial designs) was ex- 
pected for lunch, she rang for the maid, shared 
by Vanda and herself, and rustled away to un- 
dergo a very necessary course of alterations and 
repairs. 

The room was very quiet after her departure. 
Sibyl took her father’s chair and, cheek on hand, 
appeared to lapse into a reverie. The sunlight, 
striking through the window to the right of 
Vanda’s shaded one, played over the face, reveal- 
ing the purity of the skin, the healthy flow of 
the blood behind — a flow that, to the watchful 
woman opposite, was connected with occult 
power, for it seemed to move in curious discon- 
nection with the ordinary influences of humanity, 
in curious obedience to some inward and quite 


64 The Sinking Ship 

incalculable word of command. This chill and still 
creature, whose very name, chosen by a wanton 
fancy, seemed to fit her with supernatural ac- 
curacy, had her own law of being, and no wave 
of passion from the outside world had as yet, to 
the mother’s knowledge, contrived to disturb it. 
It was the face of a child, but the child who 
stares her elders out of countenance, the child 
who doles out embarrassment and never accepts it. 
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, she resembled physically 
the father rather than the mother, but this re- 
semblance was repudiated by expression. Where 
his lines spoke of suavity, hers spoke of inno- 
cence; the upper lip, rising a trifle in the middle 
to expose the short white teeth set just a degree 
too far apart, suggested pliancy of a very dif- 
ferent type from his; the brown eyes, cut like 
his on the downward slope, were warm with a 
tenderness very much their own, and had long 
stood, to Vanda’s imagination, as a central cause 
for disquietude. 

Some day, she told herself, this gentle minister 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 65 

to her creature wants would turn and rend her, 
would substantiate this hidden claim to power. 
She was not normal ; she was not safe. 

Sibyl,” she said, when she could bear the im- 
press of suspense no longer, ‘‘ Sibyl, what are you 
thinking about ? ” 

‘‘ About Mr. Renshaw, mother.” 

Here was fuel of an unexpected kind upon the 
fire of the other’s apprehension. 

‘'What about him?” she asked with jealous 
asperity. “ You’ve never seen him.” 

“ Yes, I saw him to-day on the steps.” 

“ He didn’t see you, according to Lydie.” 

“Of course not; why should he? He was 
looking miles away. I didn’t want him to see 
us.” 

“ Why not, pray ? ” 

“ We don’t belong to his dreams.” 

“ Oh,” said Vanda uncertainly, “ then you’ve 
drawn up a schedule of his possible dreams, have 
you? I hope it’s accurate; I hope it takes into 
account the main one — the dream of Royalties. 


66 


The Sinking Ship 


I’m afraid you’re romantic, Sibyl,” she added, 
seeing that the girl intended no reply. This 
young man is hunting fortune, like the rest of us, 
but he’s chosen a spot not too overrun with other 
treasure-seekers; he fancies there’s a cargo on 
this old boat — ivory and apes, peacocks and what- 
not, queer stuff that might be marketable if 
handled wisely. He’s not a philanthropist ; he’s a 
dramatist.” 

“ He saves her, mother.” 

And you’re pleased? Now I wonder why. 
It isn’t natural you should want her saved, Sibyl. 
Your interest should be with the new boats, all 
fresh paint and flags and music, dancing out to 
sea in divine ignorance of what’s in store. You’re 
young; you belong to the other side. What are 
you doing playing traitor to your natural tend- 
encies ? ” The questions were momentous. The 
speaker’s heart beat rapidly ; she pushed her work 
aside ; and her nervous mind was already hunting 
ways of retreat should response prove alarming. 

“ Mr. Renshaw is young too.” 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 67 

Ah, but that’s different.” 

Why is it different ? ” 

“ He’s a man, and a man,” she added, with a 
cautious eye on her audience, can afford to ex- 
periment; he can afford to spend a year or two 
in foreign travel before he settles down. I’m a 
foreign land, you know, Sibyl, and he thinks 
there’s amusement as well as profit in exploring 
me.” 

Do you mean he’s a humbug, mother? ” 

‘‘ I mean he’s a business man; we’re all business 
people ; you’ll be a business woman in a very short 
space of time. You’ll see what I mean when you 
get into the theater.” 

But I’ve been in the theater often, and I don’t 
see it that way.” 

“ Because you were always in front of the foot- 
lights. I used to stick you in a box sometimes 
just for the fun of watching you laugh and cry 
at the wrong places.” 

But I didn’t,” said the girl with resolution. 

I cried when you were unhappy. It was the 


68 The Sinking Ship / 

others who laughed ; they never seemed to under- 
stand. You said funny things, yet your eyes were 
like prisoners; they seemed to call to me, ‘ I can’t 
get out — I can’t get out.’ ” 

But Vanda was already in swift retreat. 

“ You dear, queer, little soul, you always see 
everything upside down. But if we chatter here 
any longer I shall be late for lunch. There’s a 
pack of people coming; goodness knows who I 
didn’t ask last night in the excitement; and as for 
Lydie, she entertains Tom, Dick and Harry every 
day at my expense. What about to-morrow, 
Sibyl?” 

‘‘ Nobody coming that I know of, mother.” 

‘‘ That’s all right. I don’t want a crowd. I’m 
keeping young Renshaw, and I can’t talk business 
with Lydie thrusting in her oar. Get her to go 
somewhere, darling. Drop the General a hint; 
he’s fairly keen, isn’t he?” 

I think so.” 

The voice was apathetic, but the elder woman 
paid no attention. 


The Devil and the Deep Sea 69 

“ Then it can easily be managed. Don’t bring 
her back till dinner time. Get him to take her 
for a run in his motor after lunch; it’s a new 
toy, so he’ll be more than willing. I’ll dispose of 
Adrian if he hasn’t already disposed of himself. 
Lunch for two — only two, mind — and make it 
good. Champagne — no — the best claret, and 
liqueurs with our coffee. And now run and tell 
Lydie I must have Elaine for ten minutes. If she 
won’t give her up you’ll have to do my hair; but 
I never look the same. You’re neat, dearest, but 
you’re not artistic, so use all your arts of persua- 
sion to capture that French minx.” 

Humming gaily she entered the big, luxurious 
bedroom, looking idly from one of its many mir- 
rors to another to catch stray scraps of her own 
elegant reflection. Pleasant recollections began 
once more to surge uppermost, among them the 
face of her young visitor, the echo of his voice as 
he said, I was very young when I saw you first.” 
He was very young still, but he didn’t know it; 
he should be carefully protected from the 


70 The Sinking Ship 

knowledge, and from all knowledge likely to in- 
terfere with this most opportune desire to stand 
between herself and public assault. He should 
sit, where he had begged to sit, at the helm of 
her pleasure-boat, and surely, surely, it would 
then be safe to drop back once more upon the 
cushions, look up into an unclouded sky, dream 
the old dreams of ascendancy. Surely the 
pressure of her years and fears was slackening, 
slipping; at all events, the blues were over for 
that day, and when Elaine came in with a glib 
and eminently French promise to make of 
Madame a Dream,” Madame lent herself to the 
experiment with the joyous abandonment of a 
child. 


CHAPTER IV 


CONCESSION 

237 King’s Road, Chelsea, is not a particularly 
desirable place of residence from the Sybarite 
point of view, but to Hadden Renshaw it pos- 
sessed the charm of the unfamiliar. His lines 
had been too uniformly laid in pleasant places to 
satisfy a temperament that his friends were con- 
tent to call mercurial and his enemies unstable. 

The only child of a city magnate and a woman 
of quality (fashionable quality be it of course 
understood), he had early jumped to the conclu- 
sion that his freedom of spirit was likely to be 
cramped by convention and had issued a first 
declaration of independence when still in his teens. 
For a time his people and his world generally 
were disposed to find cause for complacency as 
well as diversion in this attitude, and the boy 

went to Oxford with his youthful sense of im- 

71 


72 The Sinking Ship 

portance well inflated, but, entering boldly into 
the fields of debate there, he found himself face 
to face with a very different form of opposition 
from that encountered in his mother’s drawing- 
room. Neither a precocious intellect nor a fine 
command of language served to protect him from 
the missiles of less polished but more genuine 
would-be reformers, and, pricked this way and 
that by their pitiless argument, he was very shortly 
driven out of his comfortable self-estimate and 
forced to prove his vaunted claim to distinction at 
a stiff price. But there was a love of drama, if 
not of actual melodrama, in his blood, and it 
was inevitable that such a hostage of his good 
faith as he should eventually produce should 
savor somewhat of the footlights. 

The dust and the patronage of Mayfair was 
therefore shaken off at a large dinner given by 
his parents in honor of his twenty-third birth- 
day and his triumphant capture of a “ First ” in 
science. The occasion was certainly tempting. 
His father, toasting him pompously from the head 


Concession 


73 

of the table, dilated on his future with unction; 
his mother was inclined to dilate rather gar- 
rulously on his past, and when he rose to respond 
the young man was heated both by wine and con- 
tempt. But his education had at least taught 
him to present denunciation and rebellion in the 
form satiric, and it took the company some time 
to realize the nature of the bomb-shell he was 
launching in their midst. By slow degrees he 
descended towards the realm of candor, and, as 
he did so, he had the satisfaction of seeing the 
flash of a knife here and there; enlightenment 
was waking, opposition would follow, and there 
rose in him the joy of the revolutionist. He was 
not to have it all his own way, so it transpired. 
There were men at his father’s table accustomed 
to face a stormy board meeting, there were 
scholars who could turn an epigram into a whip 
quite as effectively as Hadden himself, and apply 
it in some cases with more weight. The convivial 
company, rousing itself from torpor, proceeded to 
punish, as it deserved, this unexpected and treach- 


74 The Sinking Ship 

erous assault upon the sacred rights of its most 
holy order. Elderly gentlemen found considerable 
satisfaction in hitting back — once their blood was 
up — in lashing juvenile presumption, in exposing 
the flaws common to all forms of extremism, 
whether it went by the name of “ reform ” or no 
— in short, in making, by dint of judicious amal- 
gamation, a fool of the young enthusiast and a 
halter of his logic; they took out of his mouth 
that final declaration of immunity from the laws 
of fashion with which he had purposed to wind 
up, and, referring instead to those of decency 
and gratitude, they contrived that the edicts of 
excommunication should be pronounced by them- 
selves. To be sure Mrs. Renshaw and a few of 
her friends damped the victory by the production 
of pocket-handkerchiefs; to be sure the actual 
“ kicking-out ” was robbed of much of its bar- 
barity by the introduction of cigars and the voice 
of the compromiser — that tender and watchful 
guardian of the interests of society, without 
whose presence no gathering of the clans of the 


Concession 


75 

Upper Ten is ever considered complete or safe; 
still, it was scarcely in the way prescribed by his 
imagination that Hadden severed, temporarily, 
his connection with the parental house, and it was 
scarcely as the typical martyr that he mounted the 
many flights of uncarpeted stairway leading to the 
attic of his ultimate selection. 

But, once established under the sloping roof, 
atmosphere began to act. Penury never bit deep 
enough to be painful, and, free from debt, in 
possession of fifty pounds (the residue of a small 
legacy), he was much in the position of the man 
who runs with the hare and hunts with the 
hounds. To begin with, there was the novel job 
of trying to turn this bare top-floor into some 
semblance of a home. The outgoing tenant had 
left a piece of scaffolding, which, after considera- 
tion, he understood to represent a partition be- 
tween bed and sitting-room. With innumerable 
yards of chintz he set to work covering the ugly 
skeleton, and the sound of his hammer and his 
occasional expletives eventually brought to his 


76 The Sinking Ship 

assistance a neighbor from the attic opposite — 
a German of his own age and sex, fair of skin 
and shabby of attire. Kurt Sommer, so it soon 
transpired, earned a living — a very bare living — 
by means of his flute, which he played nightly in 
an East-end orchestra, but, like many of the Teu- 
ton temperament, he was an optimist. That a 
friendship should be struck up between himself 
and the young Englishman was a matter of course, 
and, quite indifferent to the latter's layer of re- 
serve, he proffered eagerly all the assistance in his 
power; and as he worked he talked, and always 
of the artist life — of its brief winter of hardship, 
of its long, sweet summer of temperament, until 
Hadden was fast in the toils of his disarming con- 
fidence and radical amiability, not to mention a 
more mundane cause for surrender, viz. the fact 
that Kurt was an excellent cook, with a positive 
genius for making soup out of a sausage-skewer 
— a talent that left Renshaw free to pursue his 
literary activities undisturbed by the protest of 
the neglected flesh. 


Concession 


77 


He had, however, some sort of a bump of or- 
ganization. So many hours were measured off 
for exercise, so many for recreation, so many 
for pot-boiling, for, if he couldn't cook the day’s 
rations, it was but fair he should supply the ma- 
terial for them. And the task of invading Fleet 
Street with his lighter wares became a quite ex- 
hilarating, if not always a profitable, one; he 
found a positive pleasure in worsting the office- 
boy or any other guardian of the sacred portals, 
in forcing an interview, by fair means or foul, 
with some busy publisher, in exercising those dear 
powers of rhetoric to induce the gentleman to ac- 
cept an article illustrative of a prevalent social 
abuse; and it seemed to him that the practical de- 
mands of the day created for the siren who in- 
spired the night precisely the atmosphere that 
her divinity required. By the light of contrast 
she shone resplendent; by virtue of incongruity 
she took transcendental beauty, and his refusal 
to harbor a thought of her during the daytime 
lent to his surrender, when its hour struck, a sense 


78 The Sinking Ship 

of hallowed intensity. Like some fair sleep- 
walker she came to him with hands outspread 
the moment that the lamp was lit, the cheap cur- 
tain drawn, the flutist gone to his evening’s work ; 
and she was a goddess threatened. Over her head 
he saw — had long seen — the sword of what is 
impiously called advance, and it was to him she 
turned for reinstatement. Dreams of childhood, 
fancies of adolescence were beginning to blossom 
again in the air of this high chamber. The ob- 
structions of thought born of too lavish feeding, 
of too large and too subservient a circle of friends, 
were removed, and a point that had flashed in and 
out of his consciousness for many years, like a 
light in a revolving lighthouse, became perma- 
nently visible. For six months he worked at the 
great drama that was to revolutionize popular 
opinion, from eight in the evening till two and 
sometimes three in the morning, and Hadden 
Renshaw was to graduate young in the schools of 
opportunity. It was written in the Book of For- 
tune that he was to endure but a few weeks of 


Concession 


79 


suspense; he was to be turned back but a paltry 
half-dozen times from the doorstep of the woman 
to whom his manuscript had been dispatched — the 
woman he had for long elected to honor with 
what he fondly called a purely abstract passion 
of appreciation. 

But if he still clung to the term, he was grow- 
ing daily more uncomfortably conscious of its 
insufficiency, of nerves behind it threatening his 
complacency and his self-esteem, and as he sat, 
pen in hand, on this particular evening in early 
May, and frowned down at the manuscript upon 
his desk, it was plain that indecision had her talons 
out. The sheets before him were liberally 
marked with corrections in blue pencil, with 
erasures and insertions, with crosses and notes of 
interrogation. There were galling memories be- 
hind each, memories of defeat, of weakness. Up 
to a point he had carried all before him, both with 
Conquest and the manager, but at that point his 
resolution had been headed off and gradually 
worsted. Sibyl's part was to be strengthened, 


8o 


The Sinking Ship 


more light was to be thrown on the pretty 
debutante, no matter at whose expense. He had 
fought the ultimatum with ever-decreasing zeal, 
for fear had entered into his opposition and un- 
dermined his confidence; he had come too close to 
that abstract passion of his. 

He dared not risk provoking the threat of re- 
jection he had seen, more than once, in the 
actor’s eye. To hedge was derogatory, but to 
give the enemy an opportunity for retraction was, 
he found, impossible. As decorously as he could 
he had himself retreated, and now he sat facing 
the question of how far that retreat might be 
made to pander to the shreds of his pride; how 
far could his ingenuity cover it ? With his mouth 
curled into an ironic and unpleasant smile, he set 
to work, glancing up at intervals to extricate, 
from the many shapes hurrying across the region 
of his brain, the one best suited to his rather 
ignoble purpose. 

Presumably he found some species of inspira- 
tion, for after about half an hour he laid down the 


Concession 


8i 


pen with a sigh indicative of tempered satisfac- 
tion. At the same moment his quick ear caught 
the sound of tapping, then of an opening door 
and the hum of voices, and presently Kurt put in 
a shock head of hair to whisper, with a quite 
ludicrous amount of caution — A lady ! ’’ 

A lady? said the other blankly. For you 
or me ? ” 

“ For you, my friend, assuredly. I receive no 
ladies.’’ 

Nor I. What’s she like?” he added with 
suspicion. 

Beautiful — oh! so beautiful,” sighed the 
susceptible German, with an eloquent lift of his 
slender hands. 

‘‘ Then what the devil do you mean by leaving' 
her on the doorstep? Beautiful? It isn’t — it 
couldn’t be ” He rose to his feet, red be- 

neath a thrilling suspicion. “ Tall? ” he queried 
breathlessly; ‘‘a voice like the sound of water; 

marvelous hair — red, gold, copper ” 

Ze light is bad,” his friend replied ; ‘‘ but, yes. 


82 The Sinking Ship 

ze voice is as zat of my flute. You know ze 
lady? I ask her in?’' 

‘‘ Idiot ! — of course — but no, I’ll do it myself.” 

He pushed into the passage and on to the door 
of Kurt’s room, at which the visitor stood, but 
before he reached her he was aware that his pre- 
sumptuous notion had been punished as it de- 
served. She was tall, but there was no majesty 
in her bearing; she was one of those reedy girls 
one sees by the score in society and elsewhere. 
Her voice was musical, but it was soprano, it 
lacked the deep note of the one that had struck so 
poignantly upon his heart. 

“ May I speak to Mr. Renshaw ? ” she began. 
Then peering forward, for the light was very dim 
— ‘‘It is Mr. Renshaw. May I come in? I 
won’t keep you long. I’m Sibyl Conquest, and 
I’ve a favor to ask of you.” 

“ This way, please.” He spoke curtly, for 
when his vanity got a rap his manners were apt 
to suffer to some extent. And she provided him 
with more than disappointment; she embodied a 


Concession 83 

definite and dangerous grievance; her appearance 
was another touch upon the raw, for her favor 
could only be concerned with the question that had 
tormented him — the question to which he had al- 
ready succumbed. 

“ There are two steps, and this is my friend 
Mr. Sommer. No, don’t go, Kurt; Tm quite sure 
Miss Conquest has nothing to say to me of a pri- 
vate nature. We haven’t even had the pleasure 
of an introduction,” he added, setting a chair for 
her under the window, though I’m looking for- 
ward to meeting you at the first rehearsal next 
week. And the favor ? ” 

He spoke with a smile, with a lift of rather 
quizzical eyebrows. He was far from satisfied 
with her method of entrance — her quiet scrutiny of 
himself, his companion, and the room, with her 
composed settlement of herself in the seat 
of his selection, full in such light as the room 
possessed. 

‘‘ I’m sorry to bustle you,” he added, a trifle im- 
patiently. I won’t say my time’s valuable, but 


84 The Sinking Ship 

may I remind you that it isn’t quite my own just 
now.” 

She followed his glance in leisurely fashion, 
and found the desk, the manuscript, the pen 
‘‘ That’s what I came about.” 

“Then I’m afraid you come too late; all the 
alteration I think desirable has been done 
already.” 


CHAPTER V 


WALKING IN THE DARK 

Her oh ” of unqualified consternation was 
however reassuring, and with zest, as well as 
patronage, he began to explain the rights of the 
artist. 

You see. Miss Conquest, we are not justified 
in sacrificing a big cause to — forgive my bluntness 
— a small person. Your first appearance looms 
very large, naturally, in your own sight, but my 
drama and its success looms in mine, and it’s im- 
possible, simply impossible, to allow a minor char- 
acter like yours too much attention. I’ve done 
what I can, rather grudgingly I’m afraid; but I’ve 
conceded something. I’ve run you in a dozen 
extra speeches, all apt and pretty, and I’ve 
strengthened your entrance; more I can’t and I 
won’t do for you.” 

‘‘ Why did you do so much ? ” 

85 


86 The Sinking Ship 

It isn’t much,” he stammered in perplexity, 
and — and your father insisted.” 

‘‘ Why did you listen to him? ” 

When a popular manager condescends to 
argue with an unknown playwright, it’s custom- 
ary, I find, for the latter to listen.” 

‘‘ Customary — yes.” 

It was Kurt who broke the tension. Kurt, 
standing shyly back in the far distance of the 
room, his back against the wall, his round eyes of 
china blue fixed attentively upon the visitor. 

Ach ! ” he cried with exultation, you are 
clever, my friend, but you do not yet understand 
all. You do not understand the reason of the 
visit of Miss here. To me it comes. She is as 
myself; she is content to play ze flute; zat is ze 
accompaniment. She desires not to stand in ze 
front of ze stage; she desires not zat you alter ze 
parts ; she wishes zat you keep ze big idea ; zat is 
ze favor. Is it not so? Have I right? ” 

She laughed, a pleased child’s laugh of agree- 
ment; but Hadden frowned, vexed to have his 


Walking in the Dark 87 

case summed up against him in such unex- 
pected fashion by such a youthful and ignorant 
pair. 

‘‘If that’s the case/’ he said stiffly, “ I presume 
I can remove those new additions to your part 
and rely on you to explain the matter to your 
father?” 

“ Of course you can,” she answered, meeting 
his look of malice frankly. “ Father is the easi- 
est person in the world to manage.” 

“ I didn’t find him so.” 

“ No, because ” she began and stopped. 

“ Because ? ” he urged with curiosity. 

“ Because you were not sure of yourself.” 

“ Not sure of myself? Few people are much 
surer. Ask my friends, ask my family; they 
know, to their cost, how far my convictions are 
prepared to go, and have gone.” 

“ You mean,” she said with disconcerting sim- 
plicity, “ that you shook them all off to come 
here?” 

“ And you mean, I suppose, that the candle is 


88 The Sinking Ship 

in too small a ratio to the game to be worth con- 
sideration or respect.’’ 

‘"Don’t,” she begged with more laughter; 
"" you make my head spin when you tie a saying up 
into a knot like that. What I mean is, this room 
would please me well enough.” 

For the second time it was the young German 
who came to the rescue of the situation. 

“ It is an excellent lodging — yes,” he observed 
with judicial gravity. “ It is near ze town; it is 
cheap; we are content zat we acquire it.” 

"" It’s quiet,” Hadden put in with what dignity 
he could summon. “ I took it on that account. I 
can give myself up to my art here without fear of 
disturbance, and that’s all that signifies.” 

“ Your art,” she repeated softly. “ And what 
is art, Mr. Renshaw? ” 

"" You might as well say with Pilate, " What is 
truth? ’ The question is rather wide.” 

“ But if you give up so much to art,” she per- 
sisted, you must have a good idea of its value. 
You could tell me, anyway, when you began to 


Walking in the Dark 89 

love, and why; and what the goddess gives you, 
and what you give to her.” 

I could, but — the answer might go outside the 
range of your education.” 

She evinced no indignation at this rude 
repulse. 

Fm not clever, but Fm always ready to learn,” 
she said with a simplicity he was beginning to sus- 
pect. 

“ What does art give me ? ” he repeated, with 
his anger on the swell. ‘‘ Nothing of your satis- 
fied air, nothing of your even temper. She 
doesn't always allow me foothold for my dignity, 
but she gives me the hobby of creation. On such 
a night as this, still, soft and windless, I open 
the window behind you and, believe me or not, 
as you please, men and women come trooping in 
at it in such numbers that I have to employ the 
art of selection with some judgment; for every 
friend of the flesh Fve renounced there are a hun- 
dred of these spirit companions all imploring em- 
bodiment. Is it nothing to be permitted to con- 


go The Sinking Ship 

struct human creatures out of what convention 
is content to call empty air ? ” 

“ Human creatures ! That means a being with 
a body and a soul/' 

“ It does," he agreed tartly, for in her voice, in 
her speculative eye, he recognized an accusation. 

And with me the order is reversed — the soul 
comes first; these beings are created from the in- 
side. Their bodily shapes are of minor conse- 
quence; I leave to the doll merchant the task of 
tinting and molding and dressing. Tm death on 
dolls, Miss Conquest, in case you haven’t discov- 
ered the fact; they’re to me much what cats are 
to the garden maniac; I spend a considerable 
amount of my time trying to exterminate them 
and their detestable tracks; only, unfortunately, 
their name is legion; they spring up by the thou- 
sand, thanks to the vitiated taste of the day. You 
must forgive me if I become a trifle personal, if 
I tell you that, in my opinion, these same dolls 
are under your father’s patronage, and that you 
yourself — ^though you evince such a generous 


Walking in the Dark 91 

readiness to stand on one side — are not exempt 
from doll tendency.” 

It was the unblinking scrutiny to which she sub- 
mitted him that provoked his passion; it was his 
inward distress that drove him on towards a yet 
more violent outburst. 

“ The fact is you haven’t grasped the magni- 
tude of your own offer. You’ve had such a long 
day of it that it’s not surprising you should fail 
to recognize the threat of dissolution, for it’s dis- 
solution I’m aiming at, Miss Sibyl. If I make 
my point you go out and your place knows you 
no more; you go out, you and your curls and 
your simper and your whole illegal armory of 
fancy weapons, and not even the old dodderer in 
the stalls will have the spirit to call you back again. 
You’ve only held the position so long by virtue 
of hypnotism, and once the spell is broken, once 
you become visible in all your naked insipidity, 
the game is over.” 

If it’s such a poor game, so much the better 
then,” she remarked. ‘‘ But have you told me 


92 The Sinking Ship 

all? You’ve told me what you want to tear 
down, but what are you going to put up? ” 

A true figure of art. A figure with blood and 
hot water in its veins.” 

“ The figure of my mother,” she said, with 
calm eyes upon his consternation. 

“Well, why not?” he demanded, rallying his 
forces to the protection of dignity. “ Doesn’t 
every abstract question require a material peg on 
which to expose itself to a material public? Does 
it minimize the grandeur or the value of an idea 
to give it a human name ? ” 

“ No. That’s why I asked you for a name. I 
want to understand.” 

“ Then you shall understand, and if the 
knowledge hurts you, remember you’ve only your- 
self to blame; one can’t explore a Bluebeard’s 
chamber and evade the consequence.” 

He left his place and crossed to the mantel- 
piece. The room by this time was nearly dark and 
he lit a candle, with a hand that trembled either 
from nervousness or anger. Returning, he held 


93 


Walking in the Dark 

it to the wall, and Sibyl, bending forward, saw 
that he had illumined a panel portrait. She knew 
it well. It represented the Vanda of a dozen 
years ago, dressed, or rather swathed, in filmy. 
Eastern draperies. For a few all too short weeks 
she had persuaded her husband to produce a sen- 
suous drama out of the time of Pharaoh, and 
though the public had not shown itself cordial 
to this deviation from the common track, the 
actress herself had reveled in the barbaric nature 
of the passions she was permitted to exploit. 

She leaned against a marble column, one arm 
raised, the head thrown back to reveal the famous 
line running from chin to shoulder. The attitude 
was indicative of despair, but, looking closer, one 
found a narrow strip of light under the half- 
closed eyelid; emotions savage and baneful burned 
there; beneath the rigidity of the limbs one began 
to suspect taut muscles biding their moment of 
mutiny. 

The girl looked earnestly first at the picture, then 
at the face of the young man, and, as earnestly, 


94 The Sinking Ship 

the German from his far corner looked at her. 
Over the lower part of her face and over her form 
the light of the candle flickered, but on the upper 
part there lay the remnants of the daylight, and 
to the mind of the silent watcher (a mind re- 
stricted in many directions but abnormally de- 
veloped in a few) it seemed that pity, like a faint 
but luminous vapor, was emanating; it seemed to 
him, moreover, that his friend’s utterances, held 
so long in reverence, were now striking the air 
ineffectively, that each fell short of the target at 
which it aimed. 

You shall understand,” he said again. first 
of all, a difference in opinion. To you she’s 
what? A woman of forty? A mother? A 
successful actress, though not quite as successful, 
let us add, as others one could name? She’s to 
be admired, of course, but with reservation; she’s 
fascinating, but fascination isn’t quite a proper 
quality. To your stay-at-home, ‘ arrange the 
flowers ’ type of temperament she’s a disturbing 
element ; to me she’s a life-problem — do you hear? 


Walking in the Dark 95 

a life-problem. I work it out alone, with no 
more than an occasional glance through an opera- 
glass to verify intuition; I follow the line 
theoretical, and meantime she, also in solitude, in 
the most cruel and utter solitude, follows the line 
executive, and we reach the same conclusion. I 
take her my fancy-bred woman and she slips into 
the skin. It’s a fit not to be repudiated. I told 
you my work was from the inside. I detect and 
imprison the soul in definite expression; she 
clothes it with a body. The figure began where 
everything of consequence begins, in misty 
thought, in vaporous speculation, but it ends in 
granite. She is established, or she will be, before 
many weeks are over.” His opposition had gone, 
only his exultation remained. “ She’s been 
chained a long time; she’ll be stiff, maybe, in a 
joint or two, but it will wear off. Sommer — Miss 
Conquest ” — he flashed a triumphant look at each 
— “you’re outside the fairy ring, but you’ll be 
forced to come in along with that circle of skeptics 
on the great night. It won’t be a question of in- 


96 The Sinking Ship 

fluencing a majority; we shan’t give tongue in any 
particular school of idea. It’s a world language 
in which we’re going to hold forth; a language we 
used to talk — we’ve only half-forgotten. Oh, 
you may laugh, you may talk of madness, genius 
— ^what you please; but, I tell you, I swear to you, 
you’ll live to see the charm work, you’ll see her 
reinstated, see her acknowledged for what she is 
— a woman capable of transmutation into any and 
every form in harmony with pure vitality. She’s 
no Eastern witch, no Western hot-house product; 
she’s solely and simply the complete and natural 
woman free to give expression to every phase of 
art.” 

Aware for the first time that his rhetoric had 
somehow failed of its effect, he turned to look 
from one to the other of his audience. 

“Is it jealousy?” he said, in a very different 
tone, “ or is it ignorance, or merely the deafness 
of a certain temperament to a certain style of ap- 
peal?” 

“I must go,” said Sibyl vaguely, and Kurt 


Walking in the Dark 97 

Sommer hurried forward to take the guttering 
candle from his friend. 

“ I light you out,” he said eagerly. ‘‘ I take 
you to your home ? ” But she shook her head, 
looking still at the other man with that peculiar 
and now quite unmistakable expression of pity. 

“No; I go everywhere by myself, and nobody 
worries me.” 

“ Like the confiding maiden in the Irish ballad,” 
Hadden observed ; but she only smiled at the sar- 
casm and offered him her hand. 

In the passage she again refused escort even 
to the foot of the dark and steep stairway. 

“ I can walk in the dark,” she declared with a 
touch of gaiety. “ Fm like a cat, I feel more than 
I see.” And, true to the boast, she ran down the 
many flights of steps at a pace that brought the 
German’s heart into his mouth. As the outer 
door clanged harshly behind her he uttered a sigh 
of mingled relief and sentiment. 

“ She is not as ozers,” he said aloud as he 
turned to go back into the sitting-room. 


98 


The Sinking Ship 


an Undine impressive by dint of nega- 
tion. Have you never put your ear to a sea-shell, 
Kurt?’^ 

“Assuredly; it preserves ze song of ze sea — 
unchangeable, all-knowing; ze emptiness exist in 
mortal mind alone. Surely you understand, my 
friend — ^you who dive iiito ze secrets of ze under- 
world.” 

But Hadden laughed. “ You’re an incorrigible 
sentimentalist. She’s a pretty girl, and so, by 
your reasoning, she’s a wise girl and a good girl 
and the only girl, until another comes along to 
put her out of your mind. But she’s an unambi- 
tious girl, and that’s all to concern me. The 
manuscript is intact, and I’ve made my point after 
all.” 

“ You mean she gives you your point.” But 
Renshaw drowned the unpalatable reminder by 
whistling a passage from the “ The Merry 
Wives ” — one that his musical companion had 
given him all too good cause to remember. 


\ 




CHAPTER VI 

TRICKS OF THE TRADE 

Renshaw^s prejudices 4iad to suffer much dur- 
ing the progress of rehearsal. True, the play was 
read at the first meeting by Vanda herself in a 
manner more than adequate, but at the second as- 
sembling of the company, for what was called 
“ comparing of the parts — when each character 
was taken by its projected exponent and cues were 
verified — ^the young idealist was far from satis- 
fied. 

The stage was ill-lit, dirty and distinctly de- 
pressing; no scenic effects were even alluded to, 
no grouping of figures discussed, and the only 
point that stood out was the discontent and ani- 
mosity of the general company, who saw them- 
selves let in for a course of hard work without the 
faintest promise of making an individual bid for 
i . 99 


lOO 


The Sinking Ship 


popularity. And Bohemia in her morning toilet 
was an outrage to his taste; he resented the paint, 
the powder and the freedom of language as per- 
sonal affronts; but Vanda had forecast some such 
a situation and had taken precautions for her own 
personal safety. It was at her command that the 
place of operation was kept in a dim light, and 
she chose her seat in it with circumspection. With 
the most aggressively artificial woman in the cast 
on one side and the most dissipated and pallid 
man in it on the other, her carefully colored face 
showed up picturesquely, if not with its full glow 
of brilliancy. Thus carefully she extracted the 
sting of a first doubt from his mind, and it was 
not until the third act was well in progress that 
she saw another and a more serious threat leveled 
against her aristocracy. 

It came from the quarter least understood and 
most feared, from the mouth of Sibyl, and it actu- 
ally threatened into the bargain one of the 
author’s most cherished issues. The young girl 
of the drama, emblem of insipidity, was failing to 


Tricks of the Trade 


lOI 


play the foil. In a fashion difficult to recognize, 
and still more difficult to' resent, she was turning 
the points of those swift and sharp arrows with 
which the heroine had been so lavishly supplied. 
There was no question of the fact, the atmosphere 
was charged with attention instead of ennui, the 
company was sitting up in all senses of the term; 
but Vanda proved herself, as usual, capable of 
dealing with an emergency. She alone betrayed 
no trace of surprise or dismay. With patience 
and with patronage she set to work, patiently ex- 
plaining to the novice what tricks must be avoided 
in the production of a work of art. 

It’s partly a question of inflection, dear. You 
haven’t grasped the importance of keeping the 
voice raised. In those simple responses of yours 
there should be no rise and fall; it’s disturbing 
and out of place; it prevents the audience from at- 
tending to the main point. Say those last lines 
again.” But again that peculiar note of inde- 
pendence sounded, though not quite so noticeably, 
and again the woman of experience tackled it. 


102 


The Sinking Ship 


'' You’re not concentrating your mind on the 
part, Sibyl; you’re thinking of other things that 
have nothing to do with our work. This isn’t 
fair; and you’re looking about, you’re looking 
sideways instead of straight at me; it’s a trick of 
yours, and of course it doesn’t matter in private 
life, though it’s rather silly, but it matters very 
much in this instance ; it’s a furtive look, as though 
you had a friend round the corner. I know it’s 
only due to nervousness; but it’s ugly and it dis- 
turbs again. Now try once more, dearest. I’m 
sure you don’t want to spoil Mr. Renshaw’s 
story.” 

Slowly but relentlessly the strange rebellion 
was suppressed. The phrases were repeated time 
after time until all trace of suggestion, other than 
that required, had been eliminated, and nothing 
could be heard save the sweet, cheap tootle of an 
instrument of accompaniment. The audience be- 
gan to breathe again, to yawn, to whisper, and 
Vanda, like a general in comfortable control of a 
situation, began to use her big guns with renewed 


Tricks of the Trade 


103 


gusto. And she had the tact to ask nothing, ap- 
parently, of the young man’s approval. The re- 
hearsal over, she turned to the manager and em- 
barked upon a discussion as to stage arrangement, 
for all the world as though his lively sense of im- 
portance were non-existent. 

Seeing the common enemy temporarily aban- 
doned, the company swooped down on him, and, 
after a brief skirmish, he was captured and driven 
into a corner by the most experienced campaigner 
of the lot. 

“ At last,” said Mrs. Winchester coquettishly, 
“ at last we get our little talk together. We 
ought to have had it long ago; but my dear 
Adrian is so obstinate and my dearest Vanda so 
self-centered, and the darling pair of them so 
blind to their own ultimate advantage. But bet- 
ter late than never. That part of mine, Mr. Ren- 
shaw — no, it must be Hadden, I think; time’s so 
short, isn’t it, and art so long and ceremony so al- 
together superfluous ? That quite ridiculous part 
of mine can’t stand as it is, you will be the first to 


104 Sinking Ship 

agree, I feel sure, now that you've heard me in it," 
she finished with insinuation. 

“ What’s the matter with it? ’’ he demanded. 

The matter ? Everything’s the matter, or 
rather nothing’s the matter, to be paradoxical.’’ 

“ It would be nothing in other hands,’’ he al- 
lowed diplomatically. But the lady, though she 
bridled, was not to be diverted from her wrongs. 

“ You’re going to quote Dundreary; but he had 
the whiskers to give him an impetus. I must have 
something more than straw if I’m to make bricks 
for the building of your reputation. There are 
a hundred tricks of the trade we might produce 
to make me more vital.’’ 

“ But I don’t want you more vital,’’ he objected 
with growing anxiety. 

“ Ah, people have been telling tales, but they’re 
not true, I assure you. I’ve been labeled danger- 
ous, but I give you my word of honor, Hadden, 
not to interfere with your main subject; just a 
few telling, comedy lines, just a little relief from 
that rather somber theme of yours. You can 


Tricks of the Trade 105 

trust me, indeed you can, not to carry sympathy 
too far from your leading lady/’ 

“ But that’s the difficulty, Mrs. Winchester; I 
can’t.” 

Again she bridled, bringing her lurid visage 
very near his own. 

“ I might as well be in the auditorium for all 
the use you’ve made of me. And I’ve a follow- 
ing; it may not be quite as large as it once was, 
but it’s still large enough to count. In certain 
military circles ” — she paused to betray girlish 
embarrassment — “ there will be disappointment, a 
fracas possibly, if you don’t make some attempt 
to employ my talents fairly. It would be a pity, 
at this early stage of your career, to make 
enemies, to outrage the feelings of a clique ac- 
customed to enjoy my sallies.” 

But I can’t introduce a lover, if that’s what 
you want; he’d be out of focus, Mrs. Winchester. 
There’s no room for you to sally, no time either; 
as it is I shall have a job to expose my full can- 
vas in something less than a three-hour limit. If 


io6 The Sinking Ship 

I started letting all the minor characters fool we 
shouldn’t be through by midnight.” 

“ There’s no occasion for the minor characters 
to be even considered,” she retorted angrily. I 
never take a minor character, at least it’s never 
minor long after I’ve put my wits to work on it; 
and as for fooling, I dislike it even more than you 
do. There’s a great difference between farce and 
comedy. Still, if you persist in keeping the play 
serious, I submit; make me as serious as you 
please, make me a positively tragic figure if you 
like.” 

It struck him nature had done this already, but 
he checked the smile rising to his lips and listened 
politely to the remainder of her suggestions: 

All I ask is for suitable employment, and if 
you’ll allow me to say so, there’s ample room still 
in your play. The girl Winifred is exaggeratedly 
stupid, the other woman is preposterously subtle. 
Why not make of me the happy medium ? why not 
use me as a connecting link between these two fe- 
male excesses?” He could only think for the 


Tricks of the Trade 


107 

moment of Darwin's missing link, so grotesque 
did she look at these close quarters. 

“ Well," she said impatiently. 

‘‘ I don't want my effect of contrast dimin- 
ished." 

“ Then turn that odious Driver woman out," 
she snapped, and run her lines into my part, 
ril square the matter with Adrian." 

‘‘ Look at the Driver woman’s eye," he fenced 
with that lightness he could muster. “ My life 
wouldn’t be worth an hour’s purchase if I con- 
nived at such an arrangement." 

“ Please understand, Mr. Renshaw, that I’m 
talking seriously." 

“ So am I." 

“ And you positively refuse to listen to any of 
my suggestions." 

“ They come too late." 

Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes with an as- 
sumption of dignity that was ludicrous. 

“ In that case I have no more to say." 

This was satisfactory so far as it went; but as 


io8 


The Sinking Ship 


her portly form was disposed to block all ways 
of escape, he hardly knew how to make use of 
the welcome form of dismissal. 

He need not have troubled, however. A young 
woman, who had been eyeing him for some min- 
utes with fierce intention, rose to the occasion, 
if not exactly to what could be called the 
rescue. 

“If Mrs. Winchester’s through with you,” she 
said in an American twang not unpleasing, “ I’d 
like a word or two myself.” 

Possibly the old lady saw in her an avengeress; 
at any rate she condescended to sweep her silk 
skirts aside sufficiently to allow him egress, but 
it was with the recollection of Scylla and Charyb- 
dis in his mind that he took the place indicated 
by his new assailant. She was eager, it 
transpired, to complain, not of her own lines, but 
of the absence of what she called “ fat ” in those 
of her fiance, the gentleman of anaemic aspect by 
whom Vanda had placed herself at the first re- 
hearsal. It seemed that he was entitled — en- 


Tricks of the Trade 


109 

gaged indeed — to play second male fiddle in 
Conquest's productions. 

“ rd thank you/' she said with flashing eyes, 
to explain which is the second fiddle, for it 
seems to me Adolphus is never allowed to open 
his mouth except to pour wine into it, and he can 
do that just as well at home." 

‘‘ They say," said the victim of her indignation 
with spirit, “ that it takes a great artist to tackle 
the question of intoxication. Adolphus will not 
fail me or the occasion; his actual lines, as you 
say, are inconsequent and meager, but the margin 
left for suggestion is very wide." 

She stopped to muse on this, and lost him, for 
the crowd, surging in on their brief silence, 
swamped the voice of the individualist, and the 
combined attack defeated its own purpose and 
ultimately accorded him his escape. Leaving 
Greek to annihilate Greek, he slipped out of the 
throng and took refuge beside Sibyl. 

“ What a crew," he muttered, turning his back 
to the clamor. 


no 


The Sinking Ship 


“ You must strike an average/’ she told him 
cheerfully; “you’ve seen us at night and found 
us wonderful; you’ve seen us in the morning 
and found us ridiculous. We’re neither one 
nor the other; we’re ordinary workpeople, 
and we have to roll up our shirt-sleeves at 
times.” 

“Us!” he said mockingly. “You don’t be- 
long. Why don’t you draw the lines of division 
you’re entitled to? What do you mean by look- 
ing on at all this — this impudence with that quite 
unperturbed expression? Can’t you see the 
paint ? ” 

“ I see faces underneath, tired faces, pitiful and 
fearful faces.” 

“ What ! A philosopher ? or is it a philan- 
thropist? You’re not an actress,” he added on a 
sudden prick of disturbing memory. 

“ What makes you say so? ” 

“ That extraordinary performance of yours. 
What were you up to?” He spoke carelessly, 
rather too carelessly to convince. 


Tricks of the Trade 


III 


Was I up to something? '' she asked with a 
rare touch of eagerness. For an instant his reso- 
lution wavered, he considered a line of retreat, 
but discarded it in deference to an impulse of curi- 
osity. 

“ You seemed inclined. Miss Conquest, to bring 
out a personal conception of that girl — a concep- 
tion I hadn’t bargained for when I created her. 
I thought my play and its purpose were under the 
shelter of your approval.” 

‘‘ They were — they are; but I’ve been studying 
them.” 

That’s nice of you; and you’ve found a wheel 
within a wheel? ” he inquired with the benevolent 
air of a patriarch addressing a small child, an air 
that she met and set at a palpable disadvantage 
by entire gravity. 

“ The gray people,” she began laboriously — 
‘‘ the dolls as you call them — seem to have breath 
in their bodies when one gets quite close. It 

seems to me ” but at this interesting point she 

paused, looking over his shoulder towards the 


1 12 The Sinking Ship 

front of the stage. Mother wants you/' she 
added laconically. 

'' Hadden, Hadden, where have you got to ? 
We've settled the technical problems, now we 
want to tackle the vital ones. It's for you to 
decide where I’m to stand when the conviction 
comes to me that treachery is intended." 

He obeyed the summons, though not very gra- 
ciously. For a full minute his eye answered the 
flattery in hers with inattention; but she did not 
take long to dispel this first cloud ; she smiled into 
it; she laid intimate fingers on his; she produced 
a few of the thousand-and-one tricks of her trade, 
and watched him come to heel with well-hidden 
satisfaction. She gave him, as before, at the 
right moment, his order of dismissal, sweetening 
the acerbity of it with a herb he would be cer- 
tain to like. 

I'm off myself," she said with a sigh of ex- 
haustion, ‘‘ off to sport my oak; I'm going to He 
on my back and worm myself into the very soul 
of this creation of ours; it won’t be hard; it isn’t 


Tricks of the Trade 


113 

like entering a new house, it’s like going back to 
an old one, to that lost home in which one’s best 
and bravest fancies have been shut up for a 
number of years. I’m going to ferret them all 
out and polish them up till the gold glitters, and 
not a soul shall come near me. And you, Had- 
den? You’re a man, so I suppose it wouldn’t do 
to try and exact such religious zeal from you. 
You must be allowed to dilute your sense of 
spiritual monarchy, so it’s good-by until to-mor- 
row. One o’clock, please; a cutlet, and business. 
The others are all engaged, so we shall be free to 
thrash out our unfashionable theories and 
opinions. Good-by, and don’t let these people 
damp your enthusiasm; they’re only supers, the 
lot of them; it doesn’t signify how cross and how 
stupid they are. I’m the only person you’ve al- 
lowed to signify, and I shan’t fail you; for the 
next week we’re partners, you and I, co-workers, 
and I’m a good worker; even my whims and 
vanities go into the stock-pot when I’m creating, 
be very sure of that.” 


1 14 The Sinking Ship 

In a dream of recovered self-esteem he made 
his way out of the theater without so much as a 
glance to right or left. 

If he thought of Sibyl and of the broken thread 
of her confidence, it was in idle fashion. The in- 
teresting daughter of a more interesting mother 
seemed at once a fair and a reassuring definition 
of the case of general relationship. 


CHAPTER VII 


A GLASS OF TOKAY 

Vandals boudoir had been decorated to har- 
monize with certain of her own physical attributes 
rather than with the taste of any particular cen- 
tury or school of art. Eastern silks and orna- 
ments lent it the barbaric air best suited to her 
normal mood. Over the back of the divan she 
had thrown a leopard skin, and against the dap- 
pled hide the dull copper of her hair showed up to 
advantage. She wore, as usual, a loose wrapper 
of her favorite shade of brown, and such light as 
she saw fit to introduce played over it with weird 
effect, splashing the somber stuff, here with gold 
and there with orange. Hadden, sitting half the 
length of the room away regarding the gown and 
its wearer through a haze of tobacco smoke, was 
blissfully unaware that illusion had already 

marked him for her own. 

115 


ii6 The Sinking Ship 

The luncheon had been served for two; the 
table strewn with flowers and trails of featherly 
green; the dishes, limited in quantity but perfect 
in quality, had not failed to make appeal to a 
sometime abstainer. And with the feast she had 
offered him confidences. Amusedly she thought 
of the glass of Tokay with which, before rising 
from the table, she had toasted his future, and 
of the history she had so deftly mixed with it — 
the history of a woman’s life prisoned, like a 
good wine, until its value should have matured; 
the history of her own life and lot — such parts of 
both, that is to say, as could be calculated on to 
intoxicate a romantic fancy. 

Noting his ardent glances and the trembling of 
the hand that held the Turkish cigarette, she had 
but little doubt as to the winning of any game on 
which she might decide to embark with him; but, 
vanity suggesting one and policy another, she was 
disposed to let the tide of converse take its own 
way. 

“There’s a picture on your right,” she told 


A Glass of Tokay 117 

him, moving a languid arm in that direction, 
painted when I was ten years old. Turn your 
head if you want to see something rather pretty.” 

‘‘ I don’t ; and you were never the normal, 
pretty child in cambric and coral.” 

Turn your head,” she repeated gaily, “ and 
you’ll see that I was.” 

“ No. Prettiness was, is and ever will be out- 
side your province,” he insisted with obstinacy. 

Sometimes you’re beautiful, often you’re ugly, 
to-day you’re perfect.” 

And perfection’s wearisome, they tell me.” 

Not your sort; not from this distance, any- 
way. See where you’ve put me. You talked, of 
course, of the most comfortable chair, but that 
was humbug.” 

Her interest quickened a degree. She looked 
at him through narrowed eyes. 

** Shall I give you leave to come nearer ? ” 

“ I shouldn’t come. I get the better view from 
this distance; that’s why I submitted to it so 
tamely.” 


The Sinking Ship 


ii8 

‘‘ I see and I appreciate/’ She spoke the truth. 
Here was a flash of independence in a toy pan. 
Fortified by wine and flattery he was proposing 
to play the game at level stakes. Inwardly she 
smiled at such presumption, outwardly she sighed. 
She introduced the minor key and fluted once 
again of childhood and its gossamer happenings. 
Inspired by his attention, by the intensity of his 
regard, she produced figures innumerable. Vivid, 
fantastic as they were, it was yet plain his fancy 
was content to follow the flight of each. It was 
only when, weary herself of the monotonously 
beautiful pageant, she began to insert some of the 
darker shades that belong to memory that his sym- 
pathy showed signs of flagging, and, once more, 
she paused to consider the diverse aims in her tem- 
perament. As a devotee he was bound eventually 
to pall and as a goddess pure and simple she was 
equally bound to encounter rebuff. Bound to her 
chariot wheel, he could provide her with little 
novelty of sensation; riding the winged horse of 
his ambition he would presently forge out of sight. 


A Glass of Tokay 119 

With rising zeal she hunted a middle course, strik- 
ing now this note and now that with delicate, 
artist fingers. 

‘‘If you won’t look at me in cambric and coral, 
ril make you look at me in silver gauze. I was 
a Christmas fairy when they first put me on the 
boards, and I had wings and little silver shoes 
and a star on my forehead. I waved my wand, 
and poverty and pain decamped; the children of 
the poor held out their arms to me; the monsters 
of the forest yielded way. I bound the world in 
flowers, set it to music, beat the time and chose 
the measure. It was a glad beginning of the day 
of life. In dreams the wonder of it comes again. 
But as I look, the ghoul Experience whispers, and 
I know that it’s a dream, the dream that I grew 
out of. A fairy-queen, to be effective, Hadden, 
should be no higher than a grown person’s heart. 
I passed the limit, and they turned my talents into 
a new field; they made a devil of me — scarlet vest 
and scarlet hose, hoofs and a tail and a red light, 
out of the circle of which, for all my ingenious 


120 The Sinking Ship 

and mischievous devices, I found it was impos- 
sible to escape. It was equally impossible to 
escape the mental attributes of my new role. 
Wherever I went there went with me little inbred 
sin; and, as surely as I had once brought peace 
and goodwill, I now brought friction. 

“ Hadden, the horror, the cruelty of the thing 
lay in the fact that I — the personal, growing I — 
was meshed as firmly in the net of evil suggestion 
as once I had been meshed in another. It seemed 
I could play saint or sinner with equal aptitude. 
I dreamed of hell in those days instead of heaven, 
and yet I went to bed just as eagerly as ever. 
There were snakes in the garden, and they made it 
lively, if dangerous.’' 

‘‘ Don’t ! ” he said, and she flashed on him a 
look of scorn. 

‘‘What! You want to play with me like all 
the rest? What are you afraid of? The hor- 
ror? the cruelty? I’d no right to use such 
phrases. The snake makes you jump the first 
time you land on him, but evil’s a term I begin to 


A Glass of Tokay 121 

think that we misuse. The old legends would 
have taught us better. They maintain that the 
serpent is symbolical of deity, for it feeds on its 
own body; of renovation, for it casts its skin 
and grows young at pleasure; of eternity, for it is 
represented with its tail in its mouth; lastly, it's 
the emblem of wisdom. One must try all shapes 
if one is to discover the true and the permanent 
one. You wince, and that reminds me that last 
night I lay awake for a long time and I came to a 
conclusion." 

‘‘Yes?" he said, and laid his half-smoked 
cigarette in the Indian tray at his elbow. 

“ It can't be much more unwelcome to you than 
it was to me," she added, with what he was in- 
vited to take for apology. 

“ I quarreled with it as fiercely as you will 
quarrel. I defied it and denied it, but I had to 
give way in the end." 

“ You provoke my curiosity, Vanda. It was 
to be, Vanda, wasn't it ? This must be a conclu- 
sion connected with my career." 


122 The Sinking Ship 

“ You must go back/’ She raised herself on 
one elbow, expression and attitude alike denoting 
nervous excitement. Hadden, you must go 
back. Don’t look at me like that, or I shall for- 
get that I swore to be rational, unprejudiced. I 
shall begin to recall what it all means to me, what 
Fm giving up. Colleagues have failed me before, 
one after another, and none came quite so far as 
you in that marvelous prelude of yours. Read- 
ing it, I forgot your age, your sex, your educa- 
tion, everything but the intoxicating idea that I 
was not alone; that a man, young and strong and 
resourceful, kept pace with me — no, passed me, 
cut steps for me in the rocky way of spiritual ex- 
ploration. You built a figure big enough to blot 
out all the older, lesser idols of our imagination, 
but, alas, she too will fall to pieces.” 

“ Go on, please.” 

His tone was admirably calm, but it did not 
deceive her. Eagerly she resumed, for she had 
seen the opening desirable, and the audacity of 
the new line of action tickled her ingenuity. 


A Glass of Tokay 


123 


Relying on the law of perversity, she was re- 
solved to prod him down the path she least in- 
tended he should take. 

“ It wants more than courage and idealism,’' 
she went on sadly, ‘‘ to found the new heaven 
and earth, the new code of legislature. You’re 
to reduce the sum to a common denominator, to 
a single woman; but in that woman there must 
be the breath of life, and the breath of life comes 
only from one source, the source of self-abnega- 
tion. That one woman, who is to embosom the 
whole human race and to restore to it its pristine 
purity, will answer to no voice but that of entire 
devotion. She will be touched by no hands that 
have busied themselves with lesser shapes. With 
all your insight, with all your wealth of generous 
feeling and intent, you haven’t fully gauged the 
claims of your model, the fund of jealousy, and 
righteous jealousy, she conceals behind her air 
of deific condescension. It’s sacrilege, no less, to 
accord her any sort of material treatment. Like 
the rainbow, she evades analysis; impossible to 


124 The Sinking Ship 

say, ‘ Here ends the purple, here begins the blue, 
and here the yellow and the rose combine,’ for 
there are colors within colors, there are gradations 
of light and shades so fine as to defy mortal per- 
spicuity, and these are only to be defined by nega- 
tive measures, by a letting-go of the familiar five 
senses and throwing oneself on the mercy of the 
unknown, the ephemeral.” 

‘‘ Well,” he answered with control, “ I should 
be glad to know how I have transgressed against 
this peculiar code.” 

“ We’re too grave,” she said, with a change of 
note. '‘It isn’t tragedy we’re facing now; it’s 
escape from tragedy. I made the discovery. yes- 
terday at rehearsal. I turned my head at a par- 
ticular moment, and it was then that the conclu- 
sion came to me, though I refused to accept it 
without a struggle. You mustn’t frown. I’m 
not tampering wantonly with your dignity as an 
individual. It’s as a partisan of my half forlorn 
and half divine cause that I’m obliged to put your 
qualifications and disqualifications on the carpet. 


A Glass of Tokay 125 

Don’t you know that when there’s a dangerous 
expedition afoot we leave the married men be- 
hind?” 

'' And, turning your head at a particular mo- 
ment yesterday, you saw in me a married man ? ” 
he inquired with scathing emphasis. 

I saw the embryo married man. Oh, don’t 
mistake me. My little Sibyl doesn’t signify, but 
she stood at the moment for a force that does. 
You belong to Dame Grundy, and she isn’t a lady 
to let go her nurslings easily. I saw the fate 
you’ve tried to shake off settling back on you; I 
saw what you’re eventually bound to see yourself 
— the desirable wife, the son at Eton, the daugh- 
ter sacrificed to the social fetish you’ve tried so 
gallantly to defy; I saw warm slippers at the 
hearth, an easy-chair — in sum, I saw the mad- 
ness of inciting you to follow the cruel line of re- 
sistance of the flesh.” 

In the silence that followed she was 
pricked by a doubt, but it was too late to 


retreat. 


126 The Sinking Ship 

“ Tell me IVe not offended you, Hadden/’ 

“ You’ve mistaken me. Can’t you understand 
that all types have their value ? ” 

“ Yes, but — Sibyl? So — so ostentatiously nor- 
mal.” 

“You’re wrong, Vanda; she isn’t that.” 

“ What then? ” There was no trace of her in- 
ward consternation in her low voice. 

“ She’s like — like a piece of crystal,” he replied 
after an interval, lifting eyes grown suddenly pen- 
sive. “ You look intently into it and you find sub- 
stances foreign to the crystal.” 

“ Yes — yes,” she murmured from the depths, it 
would seem, of sympathetic reverie. “ I know, 
I know too well. In a mirror, in a pool of clear 
water, in a square of glass, the fancy is free to 
breed. When she was a tiny child I held her on 
my lap and I played with her apathy, but — I made 
no headway. Drummond,” she added with de- 
jection, “ uses the crystal as a symbol of lifeless- 
ness; it is beautiful of its kind, but it can never 
alter its kind; do what you will with it, back it 


A Glass of Tokay 127 

always reverts to its hexagonal perfection, its 
radiant vaunt of complete incompleteness.” 

Drummond may be wrong.” 

‘‘He may; he shall,” she answered quickly. 
“ We’ll keep the value of that most beloved little 
crystal, even at the expense of reason. You 
shall, at least.” 

“ I ? ” He spoke with rising color. 

“ It’s a way out, Hadden.” 

“ A way out of what? ” 

“ Out of the turmoil of a life like mine.” 

“ And you would be willing to change yours 
for another — for hers ? ” 

She feigned embarrassment, distress, appeared 
to hunt and to reject a multitude of replies. “ I 
— oh, I,” she stammered, “ I’m different. You — 
you saw it for yourself. I never was the normal, 
pretty child. At six years old I stood my baptism 
of fire; I learned to dance, and to play all 
kinds of music. You mustn’t allow me to 
count.” 

“ That’s easier said than done,” he replied, leav- 


128 


The Sinking Ship 


ing his chair and approaching her, but only to be 
waved back by a pair of appealing hands. 

‘‘No nearer. I won’t have you any nearer. 
You trouble the water, and I want to see my old 
visions in it. They’re all I have, all I shall ever 
have. Go back; do you hear, go back ! ” 

“And if I can’t? If I tell you it’s too late? 
If I tell you I must go your way, not because it’s 
an adventure, but because it’s the adventure for 
which I’ve been tracking ever since my childhood ? 

If I swore to you ” but now her hands were 

at her ears; she looked wildly at him for an in- 
stant; then in response, so it would seem, to the 
authority in his own glance, they fell, her face 
stiffened into the mold of awe, she whispered 
brokenly, imploringly. 

“ Don’t swear, I beg you. If you make the 
oath, you’ll keep it. I know you’re kind ; and you 
don’t know all that it means, this resigning of the 
spirit to great winds. Go back, dear boy; dear, 
handsome, kindly, clever boy, go back and com- 
promise; write of the domestic hearth, write of 


A Glass of Tokay 129 

sleek, sweet mothers and gamboling children. 
You’ve the art to gild these things, and they’ll 
take a fine polish. It’ll pay all ways, take my 
word for it, the word of a public favorite. Turn 
the light of your phenomenal talent, not on to the 
unexplored wonders of sea and land, but on to 
fashion.” 

He took the bait with avidity, dropping to his 
knees beside her couch, catching her hands, set- 
ting them with tender impulse to his cheek. 

Very eloquent, very disinterested; but don’t 
you know you’re the refutation of your own 
logic? You tell me to find life in the other camp, 
and all the time I see, I feel the throb of it here, 
in you, in your courage, in your independence. 
I take the oath to myself, since you won’t let me 
make it to you, the oath of allegiance to all you’d 
have me turn my back on. I can’t play in the 
shallows among the goldfish while you go out to 
sea in that big ship I built for you, in that fore- 
runner of a great fleet — I can’t. Oh, Vanda, 
Vanda, to yield me up to such ignoble rivals ! ” 


130 The Sinking Ship 

“ How could I tell ? How could I know that 
you were strong enough? None of the others 
were; they all went back; they couldn't pay the 
price. Why do you kiss my hands ? " 

'' I don’t know,” he faltered, and put them to 
his lips again. 

In the room the light was dim; about her and 
her draperies there hung a scent seductive, pro- 
vocative, unfamiliar; it seemed to link her with 
the great bowl of lilies on the table behind. He 
looked from her to them, his senses floating; the 
long tapering stems appeared to stir like fingers; 
in each wax-like bell he thought to catch vibra- 
tion. Shifting his glance he found the leopard 
skin and the black spots on the pale, buff back- 
ground were moving too; all things were moving, 
changing; forces in himself were yielding to the 
spell, and for an instant she dallied with the 
danger ; then policy, like a cool hunter, content to 
wait until the quarry was at close quarters, 
stepped forward and took a careful aim. 

“ But I know,” she cried with an ingenious ring 


A Glass of Tokay 13 1 

of exultation; it’s the hand of Galatea, prisoned 
for years innumerable in the marble of ignorance 
and prejudice; under your kiss the blood will be- 
gin to flow; soon, very soon, there will be life 
where there was only mechanism, for the vow 
was made. I tried to stop it, I tried to bar the 
way of the deliverer, but I wasn’t strong enough. 
I’m glad, oh, but I’m glad to know I wasn’t strong 
enough, to know that that false, worldly self 
is to be worsted, silenced, put to shame and 
death.” 

He kissed the hand again, and with a marked 
decrease of passion. He looked up at her and 
her surroundings with a less frenzied eye. The 
lilies in the bowl had ceased to quiver; there was 
a tinge of brown at the tip of each flower; they 
were grass, and to-morrow they would go into the 
oven; the spots of the leopard skin were steady 
now; it was a fine skin, but it was the skin of an 
animal worsted by the prowess of man. The 
copper head on it was fine too, but he had elected 
to look higher than personality, he had chosen to 


132 


The Sinking Ship 


play the reformer, not the lover, and he got 
slowly, not ungracefully, to his feet. 

‘‘ You’re very strong,” he said, precisely as 
though the patronizing verdict came from an in- 
dependent source, so long as you follow your in- 
stinct. When you drop to the consideration of 
the common points of view you lose your power. 
You mustn’t do it again; it isn’t fair to me or to 
yourself. There must be no further misunder- 
standing between us, no more attempts to attach 
worldly policy to first causes and possible last re- 
sults.” 

“ No,” she said, and the quiver of the low 
monosyllable sounded pleasantly in his ear. She 
turned her head away, for the quiver of her pliant 
lip would not have fitted quite so well into the 
scheme of things as propounded so confidently by 
him, designed so subtly by her. 


CHAPTER VIII 


VOX POPULI 

The curtain had fallen on the first act of ‘‘ The 
Sinking Ship ’’ and the audience was uncertain 
what reception to accord. The performers were 
summoned three times before the curtain, and 
treated to bursts of enthusiasm of a spasmodic 
kind. On their retreat, clamor broke loose from 
every part of the crowded house, and, on the 
whole, the forecast was unfavorable. It was one 
thing, the majority averred, to summon spirits 
from the vasty deep, but, as the cynic so aptly re- 
marks in his diary, will they come? ’’ and mod- 
ern society was inclined to answer “ no.” It was, 
however, entertaining to discuss the self-con- 
fidence of Vanda Fane, to foretell the downfall 
of a presumptuous and long-indulged public 


133 


134 The Sinking Ship 

favorite. The women, at least, were prepared to 
make the most of this unexpected invitation to 
look round upon the nakedness of a land long and 
artfully concealed from their inquisitive or jeal- 
ous eyes. As for Conquest, he remained a re- 
assuring link with the past, for it was the old path 
— or a very good imitation of it — on which he 
was discovered, in company with the harmless 
and necessary family lawyer of fiction, when the 
curtain rose, and the tale unfolded by the one, 
punctured by expletives from the other, diverged 
but little from the beaten track of precedent. 
Approaching the age of fifty, the hero finds him- 
self released from dependence by the death of an 
uncle to whom, from boyhood, he has been obliged 
to play satellite; and, synchronous with this wel- 
come order of release, there comes to him a very 
different piece of knowledge. The woman who 
has shared his life for twenty years will have to 
be repudiated. Faithful to her during all this 
period of discomfort, he is compelled to own to 
his confidential servant that he has succumbed, but 


Vox Populi 135 

a few weeks back, to the very different charms of 
a girl of nineteen, and that he is mentally in- 
capable of refusing the offer of her hand made to 
him, French fashion, by her guardian. The new 
Marquis de Laure takes over with his fine inher- 
itance the responsibility of a sick conscience, and 
to him in his distress comes Vanda in disarray. 
For the first time during a long life of self-con- 
trol, feeling has outrun discretion. In a hideous, 
black gown, with tumbled hair and a pale face dis- 
torted by agitation, she flies to hear the con- 
firmation of the rumor that has reached her, and 
along with it she hears, all too plainly, that sec- 
ond tale, that most cruel repudiation of her claim. 
With the quickness of one schooled in the ways 
of circumlocution, she comprehends the situation. 
Material aids to beauty have been forgotten under 
the exigency of the moment; and now, as she ac- 
cepts his halting answers to her pertinent and 
probing questions, all the spiritual attributes of 
that state seem to withdraw; she seems positively 
to shrink before the puzzled eyes of the audience. 


136 The Sinking Ship 

Mute and broken, she looks at her betrayer, a 
long look, in which the undercurrent of lives such 
as theirs appears to run openly, a river of mud 
and of blood hurrying, not to the open sea, but to 
the bottomless pit of annihilation. And yet be- 
neath her calm there is, perceptibly to the highly- 
strung, the promise of approaching storm. It is 
still far away ; it will not break immediately, with 
dramatic vehemence, over this most deserving 
head. The man obtains his second order of re- 
lease; he is dismissed to assimilate, to enjoy, if he 
can, this new fancy; and the fancy is christened 
gently, kindly — a little too gently and kindly 
quite to convince an ear less partial than that of a 
lover. With his departure the sense of coming 
disaster grows more perceptible. Impossible now 
for any one to mistake the nature of the deserted 
woman^s passivity; and, before familiarity can 
breed contempt of its significance, it has been fired 
by a runnel of vitality, brief and vivid as a first 
flash of lightning across a stretch of open coun- 
try. The lowered eyelids rise; the long, flaming 


Vox Populi 137 

eyes move over the empty stage from right to left 
and back again; a shiver runs the length of the 
shabby form and the head goes back; the line from 
chin to shoulder gleams out of the darkness, 
silhouetted against the black oak paneling of the 
somber room. She utters a low cry, a half 
strangled, wholly moving sound; she moves for- 
ward, one of those swift familiar rushes, and it is 
as though a forest creature, waking from its 
winter sloth, became once more imbued with life; 
but it is not the life with which her audience is 
cognizant; it is a movement of that haunting 
fourth dimension which still stands outside the 
pages of the mathematical primer. This is a pro- 
logue; the usual stage pieces of resistance are but 
accessories, and the main theme — to the intuition 
of the more intelligent — is to move on into the 
vague and shadowy region commonly known as 
‘‘ the problematic.” 

Truly a divergence from the customs of this 
particular house, and a sounding slap in the faces 
of those idyllic lords and ladies, presented at such 


138 The Sinking Ship 

expense through so many seasons. No wonder 
the public and the press should hesitate to pro- 
nounce a verdict, for it is precisely on such occa- 
sions as these that the tide, taken at the flood,” 
carries a discriminating critic into the harbor of 
pre-eminence, while there is nothing more fatal to 
such happy achievement than the proclamation of 
a false prophet. 

At this early stage of the proceedings it was 
therefore best to be circumspect, and in the dress 
portions of the house such a tendency was most 
conspicuous. 

‘‘ What do you make of it ? ” a young officer of 
unhealthy aspect asked of his neighbor in one of 
the boxes. 

‘‘ Nothing — as yet; but I fancy that woman can 
be trusted to take care of herself.” 

He regarded her youthful features with some 
interest. 

‘‘ You don't approve these footlight ladies ? ” 
he asked quizzically. 

“ Are we likely to approve them any more than 


Vox Populi 139 

you approve the Boer whose bullet, rumor says, 
you’ve still got in your side? ” 

Oh ! Then the rivalry’s acknowledged at 
last?” 

‘‘ Yes. The position is too desperate to be ig- 
nored. We’re in the open, Mr. Hallidan, as you 
ought to know, seeing that you yourself are very- 
much in the thick of the conflict. Yes; we’re 
frankly on the war-path. Night after night we 
buckle on our armor and turn up at these boring 
performances with a courage worthy of — I won’t 
say a better cause — but a more responsive one.” 

He met her provocative glance with real appre- 
ciation. 

“ Go on, Miss Mercer. You’ve always had my 
admiration, as you’re well aware; but you’re be- 
ginning to assault my curiosity. Go on; your 
mother’s quite engrossed with somebody in the 

stalls. You realized ?” 

I realized,” she broke in lightly, ‘‘ that if we 
didn’t turn our faculties on pretty quickly there 
would be a very thin red line of heroes to rescue. 


140 


The Sinking Ship 


The history of the war of this last year alone 
makes gruesome reading; it’s been a wholesale 
slaughter of the innocents; elder sons going down 
like so many ninepins; coronets filched and straw- 
berry-leaves plucked and scattered or pinned care- 
lessly to the sleeve of a mimic dairymaid. Nothing 
too sacred to be subjected to the devastating as- 
sault of the front row of a female chorus. But 
the worst is over; I tell you solemnly, the worst is 
over. They’ve taken the position, but they can’t 
hold it now that we’ve recognized the need of per- 
sonal interference, now that we’ve thrown off our 
cumbersome garments of so-called dignity. 
We’re too many for them, too well-educated for 
them; our mothers are bringing us on in legions, 
in well-organized legions. Look at me — ^yes, as 
closely as you please. I’m on sale as surely as 
they are, and I’m not nearly so expensive. You 
can corroborate the truth of these vaunts; my 
brother will guarantee my temper; my maid will 
guarantee my complexion and my hair; Somerset 
House will guarantee me a little fortune of my 


Vox Populi 141 

own, enough to pay for gowns. I’m twenty-two, 
and it seems a pity, don’t you think, I should be 
taken at the Sibylline price? Oh! and one ad- 
vantage more — it’s probably the most useful of 
the lot — I’ve taught myself never to open my eyes 
when there’s anything disagreeable about.” 

‘‘ It couldn’t have been more frankly put on the 
other side of the footlights,” he answered, 
slowly smoothing his slight mustache back from 
his lips in meditative fashion. I — I’ll think it 
over. Miss Mercer.” 

‘‘ Thank you, so much. Mother, Mr. Hallidan 
is going to think it over.” 

“Think what over?” the bejeweled lady at 
the back of the box inquired in a bewildered man- 
ner. 

“Need you ask, dear? What you’ve been 
thinking over, what I’ve been thinking over, what 
all my sisters, cousins and aunts have been busy 
thinking over the last five years.” 

“ Mary, you’re talking nonsense. She’s al- 
ways doing it, Mr. Hallidan, and in such atmos- 


142 The Sinking Ship 

phere it’s not to be wondered at. The play, now. 
What are they aiming at ? I can’t make head or 
tail of it. I only know this theater’s considered 
the most comfortable place in town for an after- 
dinner nap, and it’s belying its reputation. If 
that woman wants to go to pieces she needn’t do 
it in public; and if she’s dilapidated now, what 
in the world will she be after we’ve had four 
more acts of her ? ” 

Mr. Hallidan didn’t know or didn’t care. 
Plays only amused him in so far as they gave op- 
portunity for physical display to women of at- 
traction. In the stalls, however, there were many 
disposed to criticize from a less restricted basis, 
and one pretty woman, ostentatiously the artist 
in dress, in manner and in language, held a court 
to whom she explained, very minutely, the im- 
pression made upon the sensitive place of her 
mind by the performance so far as it had 
gone. 

There are two, and only two, possible out- 
comes,” she insisted. “ Either the Fane woman 


Vox Populi 143 

sees no more fields of conquest, and meditates^a 
dramatic exit from the stage through the door of 
suicide, or she has discovered some ingenious in- 
ventor with a stagelight calculated to supply re- 
juvenation. She has made all the splash she can 
above the ordinary water-line; now she con- 
templates performing underneath, trading on our 
curiosity concerning the occult and the obscure. 
There is a daughter on the programme, and that 
favors my first supposition. Death before the 
dishonor of being superseded in public favor. 
Take my word for it, my friends, there is to be 
tragedy enacted here to-night. In the third act 
a golden drinking vessel will be produced and 
filled to the brim with stage-poison; unobserved 
by all save myself and those I have forewarned, a 
real poison will be added, and a scene of un- 
rivaled excitement will ensue. We shall be 
treated to the representation of a genuine death 
agony, the tale of which will live to the end of 
time.” 

This theory finding advocates and scoffers, dis- 


144 The Sinking Ship 

cussion flourished, running into extravagant chan- 
nels. 

In the dress circle too there was animated dis- 
cussion, though much of it was concerned with 
the attitude of the audience. In this part of the 
house it is an incontestable fact that artistic acu- 
men is least developed. One might fairly talk 
of three classes of frequenter. Firstly, the class 
that prefers comfort to fashion, that likes to lean 
back and digest a good dinner without risking the 
penalty of the stiff neck that comes from sitting 
sideways in a box, or the crick that invariably 
appertains to a seat in a front stall. Secondly, 
the parasite faction, who love to boast (from a 
little way off) of their kinship with society, and to 
exercise the rights of relationship in proverbial 
fashion. The interval is their Waterloo. With 
a zeal that is hardly decorous, and very often dis- 
astrous to the gowns of their neighbors, they make 
a rush for the front of the circle the moment the 
curtain falls and proceed to rake the plains below 
with opera-glasses. They discover and denounce 


Vox Populi 145 

all the husbands sitting with other people’s wives, 
and a good many who are innocently and most 
contentedly sitting with their own; and no amount 
of correction ever seems to curb these peculiar 
pleasure-seekers or to put them to the blush of 
confusion. And thirdly, there is the class who 
come with kind, expectant faces and a poor rela- 
tive in tow, to enjoy the rare excitement of an out- 
ing. They are prepared to be impressed and 
pleased with everything, most of all, perhaps, with 
the effect of the wonderful entertainment upon 
the young folks present, and when, as too often 
happens, the story crosses the boundary defined 
by their intelligence or their taste, they invariably 
meet the emergency as the ostrich is supposed to 
meet his enemies; they bury their simple heads in 
the sand of an utter refusal to take the ugly situ- 
ation in; they glue their eyes to some fine piece of 
scenery, to some pretty girl’s frock, to anything 
that will suffice to give the mind a counter-occupa- 
tion from the one indicated. It is not from the 
dress circle that the vote of success or failure h- 


146 The Sinking Ship 

sues. The voice from the circle above is in- 
finitely more significant, and here, on this par- 
ticular night, discontent was rife. The company 
in the upper circle is very largely composed of 
young persons who have hopes of one another,” 
and who are just dowered sufficiently with 
worldly goods to afford a comfortable seat at a 
reasonable figure. The price of that seat is never 
very far from their recollection; consequently 
they are alive to what they call their rights. 
‘‘ The Sinking Ship ” could certainly not be said, 
thus far, to cater to those rights. Here was no 
inciting advocate of Hymen to help transform 
the hesitating wooer into a pronounced suitor, and 
a young woman from a hat shop in Bond Street 
went so far as to announce her intention of 
chucking the thing ” and going home. This 
drastic mode of expressing disapproval was how- 
ever overruled by the gentleman “ treating,” and 
without any very great expenditure of eloquence. 

“ I don’t want to disappoint you, Mr. Robin- 
son, and spoil your evenin’ out. I’m not one to 


H7 


Vox Populi 

think of myself and my feelings at any time; but 
it’s no use my saying this show’s what I expected. 
The fact is. Miss Fane’s like the rest; she fkids it 
don’t pay to play the lady. She’s held out longer 
than most — I’ll say that for her; but she’s going 
to break out to-night, if I’m not very much mis- 
taken. It’s an awful life these folks lead behind 
the scenes. I could tell you things, Mr. Robin- 
son, that would make your hair stand on 
end.” 

Mr. Robinson was pleased by this allusion to his 
hair. It looked as though Miss Eastham, on 
whom he had serious designs, hadn’t noticed that 
such a feat as the one alluded to was practically 
impossible. He passed his hand over the smooth 
surface of his bald head, wondering, on second 
thoughts, whether Fate had gone one better and 
restored that thin, auburn patch that had once, in 
the long-ago, been the pride of his adoring 
mother. In another walk of life Mr. Robinson 
would undoubtedly have been entitled to call him- 
self a mystic, and his interest in the prosaic shop- 


148 The Sinking Ship 

girl was at perpetual war with other of his pro- 
clivities. 

I got it all from my sister Bessie,” she was 
saying confidentially; “ she had a fancy to try the 
stage; went to see this very man, Conquest, and 
he looked her over as if she were a horse for sale; 
told her to take off her hat, and then if he didn’t 
run his hand through her hair ! She scooted for 
the street in double-quick time. The next man 
called her ‘ my dear ’ slick off, and the next one 
said there wasn’t a demand just then for her sort 
of figure, and then George put his oar in for the 
twentieth time. She was low, as you may guess, 
and running short of bus fares. She didn’t fancy 
him particular; but everything seemed to fit in. 
He got a rise, and his mother died (such an old 
termagant, and) — well, she caved in and took 
him, and I don’t know that she ever regrets it, ex- 
cept when she’s in the theater and sees men look- 
ing smart and spry; but, as I tell her, she should 
see ’em the next morning at eight o’clock when 
George is going off to the city as brisk and cheer^ 


Vox Populi 149 

ful as you please. It don’t do to take folks on 
their night value; Fve learned that in my busi- 
ness. You take my glass and look down there — 
second box on the right — a woman with a long 
yellow switch in her hair; it’s no more hers than 
it’s mine. She’s a Mrs. Torry — American — and 
as ‘ go-ahead ’ as they make ’em. She pulled 
that thing out of one of our hats this morning, 
and, you mark my words, not a penny will she 
pay for it. She never pays for anything except 
by sending her friends to pull our goods about; 
but we daren’t make a fuss. She’s got into the 
right set, and she’s got a tongue you can hear 
across half London. We’ve got to accept her 
good word instead of her cheque, and be thankful 
into the bargain.” 

Mr. Robinson ignored the offered glasses. He 
had lapsed into an air of melancholy retrospec- 
tion. 

“ What’s up with you ? ” the lady de- 
manded, becoming aware of this division of 
sympathy. 


150 


The Sinking Ship 


Nothing. I’m thinking it all out.” 

‘‘What? Trade worries? ” 

“ No. This here play. I’ve told you a good 
deal about myself, Miss Eastham, but I haven’t 
ever told you that I’m a playwright.” 

“Gracious!” said the girl mischievously. 
“ You don’t say so ? And why, pray, haven’t you 
brought me to see your masterpiece then, instead 
of this twaddle ? ” 

“ Because the managers won’t look at it,” he 
said lugubriously. “ They don’t want master- 
pieces. But if this here work is going to go 
down ” — he jerked his thumb meaningly towards 
the stage — “ there’ll be a call before long for me. 
This young man — ^what’s his name, Renshaw? — 
has got a-many of my notions. I can’t wrap ’em 
up quite as fine as he can; I’ve not been to the 
university; but I tell you we’re on the same job. 
He calls it ‘ The Sinking Ship ’ ; I call it ” — ^he 
dropped his voice yet lower, looking warily for 
the eavesdropper — “ ‘ The Soul of Peter Pindar.’ 
He’s going to use a woman to point his moral; 


Vox Populi 15 1 

IVe used a man; but it’s the same moral. Miss 
Eastham, have you ever heard of the Trend? ” 

‘‘The Trend? No, indeed, unless you mean 
the coming fashions. I’ve heard of them right 
enough, and precious ugly they are.” 

“ It’s a fashion,” said the little man, im- 
pressively, “ in ideas, and not in garments, and it’s 
coming this way. Miss Eastham; it’s coming slow, 
but it’s coming sure; it’s in the atmosphere; it’s 
hanging over our heads; it’s circling around us, 
and the circle’s getting smaller and smaller. Why, 
even here to-night, where you’d think to escape 
from anything gloomy and mysterious, blessed 
if it isn’t here too! ” 

“ But what is it ? ” she asked, growing curious 
in spite of herself. 

“ I can’t tell you; nobody can tell you; you’ve 
got to feel it for yourself. Didn’t you feel it ten 
minutes back when that woman was standing 
there? for I did, right down my spine and right 
up into the roots of my hair,” he told her, in 
sublime forgetfulness at the moment of his lack of 


1^2 The Sinking Ship 

that commodity. But Miss Eastham decided she 
didn’t want to yield to this call of the super- 
natural. 

“ No, I didn’t,” she said tartly. I felt a bit 
uncomfortable, as I always do with these im- 
proper plays when I’ve got a man along. If I’d 
had a notion what you were letting me in for I’d 
have stayed at home — upon my word I would — 
and rested my back. I’ve had an ache in the 
right shoulder blade for nearly three months now, 
and it’s time I got rid of it.” 

‘‘ That’s the beginning,” he said eagerly. 

“The beginning of what — rheumatism? I 
hope to goodness it isn’t.” 

“ It’s the beginning of the influence. You start 
by feeling uncomfortable, and you go on to quar- 
reling with your food and your relatives and 
your prospects and everything you’ve been con- 
tent to call your life.” 

It was plain he voiced symptoms that must 
have been troubling him for some time. He 
looked very pale under the electric lights, and a 


Vox Populi 153 

shining line of sweat had broken out along his 
high forehead. 

“ Come, Mr. Robinson; it’s not like you to be 
down-hearted. You’re a sensible man with a 
sound business, and if things do go up and down 
a bit with those idiots in Parliament, you know 
as well as I do that we’ll have ’em out before very 
long now. And it’s the same for everybody. 
We’re not selling as we ought, though we’ve as 
good a name as any in London.” 

“ Parliament ! ” he answered with unimpaired 
gravity. ‘‘ It hasn’t anything to do with Parlia- 
ment.” 

‘‘ It’s like a riddle,” she told him, with an ef- 
fort after levity. ‘‘ It’s evidently in Miss Fane 
and not in Parliament; it’s in you, and it’s most 
certainly not in me. Can’t be a letter of the 
alphabet; but I’ll bet it’s just as silly. I’ll tell you 
what it is; it’s underfeeding. You’ve been din- 
ing off an egg, as I do at times, and it doesn’t 
pay.” 

Mr. Robinson was eventually persuaded to 


154 The Sinking Ship 

leave it at that, and to accept refreshment from 
the little bag his companion produced. 

Above them again the gallery and in the gods 
opinions and suspicions were exchanged yet more 
freely, if even less grammatically. There was the 
funny man to direct operations and hit many a 
serious nail on the head with the hammer of his 
lively wit. The heroine of the night overwhelmed 
him as little as did the giggling expostulations of 
his girl, whose shut up, Joe ! was a familiar 
stimulus to effort. 

‘‘ We're in for dirty weather, mates," he de- 
clared jocosely. When a lady lets you orf as 
easy as all that, she ain't done with you. I'd 
rather 'ave a ‘ clout on side o' t' head,' as they 
say Lancashire way, than one of them nasty 
looks." 

The never-to-be-solved question as to how deep 
the wiles of woman go, and are entitled to go, 
was bandied about as briskly as below stairs. The 
suffragette was not slow to get her oar in and 
apply it briskly to all the male knuckles within 


Vox Populi 


IS5 

reach; the anti-suffragette was not long rising to 
the defense of the occasion, but her eloquent reci- 
tation of the theory of St. Paul, and her own 
virtuous and uncompromising acceptance of it, 
was robbed of its due effect by her little boy, who 
ought to have been safely in bed, but who, demoral- 
ized by the rare delights of dissipation and unlim- 
ited bull’s-eye, chipped in with a shrill and all too 
pertinent account of how pa came by the piece of 
sticking-plaster on the bridge of his long nose. 

Personality having got a footing, the argument 
waxed loud, and the law, in navy blue and bright 
buttons, administered a little mild expostulation. 
The inevitable baby woke to the brawl and lent 
a melancholy contribution. But, with the rising 
of the curtain, clamor simmered down, attention 
set in with admiration to follow, for the stage had 
been reset in lavish style. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE WHEEL WITHIN THE WHEEL 

The taste of the unhappy manager was here, at 
last, apparent, and a veritable feast of color had 
been produced. The public was invited to assist 
at the celebration of harvest-home. The stacks 
of corn, more yellow than nature’s own, the gala 
costumes of the peasants, far more picturesque 
and effective than correct, the marvelous dresses 
of the aristocracy who graced the occasion with 
rare condescension, made up a whole infinitely re- 
assuring, and central, ensconced in a nest of hay, 
the debutante was discovered and accorded a rap- 
turous welcome. With curls about her neck, 
with a wreath of poppies on the lap of her white 
muslin gown, she was suitably employed in re- 
pelling the playful advances of a pet lamb, while 

at her feet the Marquis expatiated idly and 
156 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 157 

wittily upon the follies of a town life and the 
virtues of Arcadia. 

But the lover’s rhapsody was disturbed by a 
group of acquaintances, and he had to submit to 
congratulation of a satiric kind, firstly, upon his 
coming marriage, and secondly, and more sug- 
gestively, upon the near prospect of a feast in- 
augurated in honor of it by one of his friends — 
the friend — so it was more or less delicately hinted 
— from whom such generosity might least have 
been expected. 

De Laure betrayed but a momentary doubt of 
the good faith of this nameless person, a doubt all 
too speedily drowned in a glass of ale; while the 
lamb, playing up to the occasion with quite un- 
canny spirit, finished the work of distraction, out- 
did itself in droll antics, lost its head in fact, and 
had eventually to be removed, impromptu, by a 
couple of the over-dressed laborers. 

Levity was further encouraged by the entrance 
of the Guardian, of whom mention has been 
made. He was designed to figure as the un- 


The Sinking Ship 


158 

consciously funny man whose optimism is always 
the butt of his companion’s wit, and whose curi- 
osity concerning the past history of the Marquis 
might have been put on a par with popular interest 
in the early love affairs of Julius Caesar. 

More heartily than all, he accepted the invita- 
tion to the banquet; more cordially than all, he ac- 
claimed his admiration for the interesting hostess, 
for her person, her character and her Chateau 
Lafitte. Universal approval announced the 
termination of this portion of the play; it was 
the approval of persons who are breathing prop- 
erly after a spell of discomfort. 

But behind the curtain Hadden Renshaw was 
being inaugurated into yet more of the idiosyn- 
crasies of the profession, and he was not taking 
his medicine well. Impossible, he found, to 
recognize his divinity in the agitated woman he 
had caught more than once with her eye to the 
hole in the curtain, enumerating the more dis- 
tinguished of the names of the early arrivals in 
stalls and boxes; Vanda Fane, face to face with a 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 159 

crisis in her career, betrayed dependence on some 
very common human attribute. She was frac- 
tious, and, what was worse, she was afraid. 
Through sheer nervousness she forgot, not only 
the young author’s stock of prejudices, but many 
of his best lines. 

Nor was Conquest altogether a reassuring fig- 
ure; true, he toiled indefatigably for the good of 
the cause, he made the most of every word and 
gesture, but his zeal was purely business zeal, 
even his few leisure moments were dedicated to 
the task of raking the dress-portions of the house 
and dropping a c6nfidential glance into some 
susceptible, female eye at each such excursion. 

Fleeing from disillusion, Hadden found him- 
self, before very long, in the very spot he least de- 
sired to seek — beside the one person who never 
failed to rouse in him a latent and inexplicable 
sense of self-distrust. But for the present self-dis- 
trust was less painful than distrust of others, and 
Sibyl’s clean and clear cheek, which she had 
resolutely refused to stain with pigments, her 


i6o The Sinking Ship 

frank smile, her simple converse, offered too in- 
vigorating a tonic to be resisted. Where every 
one else, from the callboy upwards, evinced anxi- 
ety, she alone remained her calm and customary 
self. 

Vanda, however, was a woman accustomed to 
rally as well as to collapse. Before very long her 
intuition scented the danger and she roused her- 
self to tackle it. The momentous third act was 
about to begin, and Hadden, standing in the 
wings, with Sibyl’s scarf upon his arm and Sibyl’s 
brown head very close to his shoulder, became 
aware that the woman in the center of the stage, 
awaiting the rise of the curtain, was regarding 
him with a challenging glance. 

The beat of his heart quickened, and once again 
he thought of the lamp to which his fancy had 
often likened her face; and as he stared he saw 
her head go back in the fashion he had learned 
to love and watch for; the lips parted and he 
caught the ivory of her teeth against the red of 
them; she smiled through and past him on 


The Wheel Within the Wheel i6i 

towards that original and wonderful vision of her- 
self that he had presumed to question if not actu- 
ally to denounce. 

And she was back in her old trappings of state. 
In theory he might disdain them, but it was im- 
possible for the flesh not to yield some tribute. 
Her red-gold hair, dressed high, was held in 
place by a glittering serpent; her gown of cloth- 
of-gold was cut to display every line of the gal- 
lant figure ; low on her forehead hung an Egyptian 
star of strange design, the tempered luster of the 
stones in it serving to enhance the brightness of 
the eyes between which it had been suspended. 

Invisible since the grim prologue, it was no 
wonder that the audience, as well as the emo- 
tional youth, should stare, puzzled, disappointed 
or entranced, each according to temperament or 
sex. 

She stood in a vast reception room lavishly dec- 
orated, for here again the manager had been ac- 
corded a free hand. On a raised platform, run- 
ning the length of the back of the stage, a buffet 


1 62 The Sinking Ship 

had been erected and set out with oriental mag- 
nificence. Massive dishes of crystal, of jade and 
of silver-gilt were piled high with fruits and del- 
icacies; jeweled cups and flagons, tall vases of 
Venetian glass, masses of flowers and ferns, cush- 
ioned divans in brilliant shades of silk — all these 
combined to create an effect little short of intox- 
icating, and, in ample time to prevent the charm 
from palling, the low note of intrigue was struck. 

Like a bell to whose construction precious 
metals have been sacrificed, she sounded this same 
welcome note in diverse ways. Now it was 
liquid, ingratiating, subdued ; now it was mischiev- 
ous — a silver tinkle; now it was somber — a 
funeral bell; and, all the while, the stage was 
filling. Handsome men and women lent color to 
the scene and significance to the central figure in 
it. With each new-comer her circle of influence 
widened, for it was from her and her alone that 
conspiracy, vague as to aim, but definite as to di- 
rection, emanated. And, needless to say, the two 
to whose honor or whose undoing the gathering 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 163 

had evidently been called made their entrance at 
the true dramatic moment, pausing, in the true 
dramatic way, to establish their identity and their 
connection with the plot firmly in the minds of 
the attentive audience. 

To a running fire of pleasantry the Marquis 
moved forward, allowing himself to be absorbed 
into the ribald mirth of his friends, and, un- 
consciously, persuaded to increase with every step 
his distance from his -fiancee, who, maintaining 
her place in the doorway, was as speedily sur- 
rounded by a second bevy of guests, in accord- 
ance with the directions of the presiding genius of 
the scene. 

As before, the girl was dressed in white; but 
here the straight, prim lines of her gown looked 
odd beside the flowing apparel of the rest; she 
had no wreath, moreover, no lamb, no back- 
ground of yellow wheat, and her vaunt of sim- 
plicity struck chill. Her arms, bare to the elbow, 
had not yet outgrown the angularity that belongs 
to childhood; the small expanse of neck exposed 


164 The Sinking Ship 

showed thin and brown beside the luminous, 
painted flesh of the other women. Above her 
head, void of all ornament save the thick smooth 
coils of her hair, the shafts of doubtful wit and 
mock flattery flew rapidly, pitilessly, purposefully, 
and, at each of her failures or refusals to catch 
and cap the sallies, her audience shrugged and 
winked and smiled, infusing ever more of malice 
and less of restraint into every utterance. 

Gravely the victim of their ill-breeding looked 
from one face to another; simply, monotonously, 
as though each query were legitimate, she 
tendered her soft responses, till presently, in an- 
swer to a preconceived signal, the two battalions 
melted into one; the betrothed pair were invited 
by Vanda, with all and more of the ostentation 
common to the movements of royalty, to take the 
seats of honor; the two gilded chairs set well 
above the level of the rest. The feast began, and 
for a time De Laure maintained his air of satis- 
faction; he jested and was jested at; he drank and 
was drunk to; he bent to whisper, now behind a 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 165 

woman’s fan, now into the ear of a boon com- 
panion; he accepted not only the challenges to his 
own wit and aplomb, but those far more numer- 
ous ones launched at his lady, until the fusillade 
became too hot for a single man to meet, and 
suspicion stirred. All too readily he fell into 
the trap prepared, all too readily his anger rushed 
in the direction whither it was meant to rush — 
upon the incapacity of his chosen wife to meet the 
badinage of his familiar world. Soldier that he 
was, as well as juggler of phrases, it made him 
furious to note her lack of fighting quality. He 
was, moreover, just a degree less infatuated than 
on his last public appearance; already the faint 
pressure of marital chains had begun to fret. 
The public verdict, for which, in the first glow of 
his enthusiasm, he had forgotten to canvass, was 
antagonistic to her, compassionate to him, and 
compassion was, to one of his temper, the unpar- 
donable wrong. 

For the first time he looked at his new toy with 
attention. If she showed no fear she assuredly 


1 66 The Sinking Ship 

showed no spirit either; innuendo and covert in- 
sult failed to infuse fire; and when at last one 
roisterer, bolder than the rest, shot half the con- 
tents of his cup into her lap and babbled, all too 
carelessly, of accident, she merely smiled, first at 
him, then down at the red stream of wine disfig- 
uring the purity of her gown. 

“ Imbecile ” was the mutter round the board, 
and roughly the outraged lover drove the verdict 
home. 

Springing to his feet, in defense of all he knew 
of the term honor, he contrived in less than a min- 
ute to pick a quarrel, on the most fantastic and 
neutral ground he could discover at such short 
notice, and arranged to meet no less than half a 
dozen of the best swordsmen, and the worst of- 
fenders present in strict order of social precedence 
so soon, he poetically observed, as the early 
morning sun should tip the little hills with gold.” 
Pending this efYort on the part of the early morn- 
ing sun, he suggested, with galling civility, a gen- 
eral dispersal; and, by twos and threes, the com- 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 167 

pany departed, until the great stage was empty 
save for the figures of the Marquis and those 
of the two women who had, between them, so sud- 
denly and so unexpectedly effected his ruin. 

About to approach the younger, sitting white 
and motionless as a snow image, he caught the 
blazing eye of the other, and stood petrified by 
what that eye appeared slowly to betray. Shak- 
ing off his paralysis, he approached her, caught 
her roughly by the arm, and broke out into low 
bitter laughter. 

‘‘ So it came from you,’' he said between his 
teeth, ‘‘ it came from you, traitress, deceiver, in- 
trigante! 

It came from me,” she told him with un- 
ruffled pride, and then, her aspect melting, she be- 
gan to tell, in all its bold and idealistic entirety, 
the story that the young man in the wings had 
so perseveringly conceived. But, watching her, 
listening to the limpid notes of her voice, inch by 
inch the awful conviction was driven home to him 
that his drama, as once before, was being taken 


i68 The Sinking Ship 

out of his hands, that his conclusions were being 
tampered with. 

Times out of number this scene in the banquet- 
ing-hall had been rehearsed under what he had 
been content to call his own direction. Was it 
possible, he now asked himself in dire dismay, that 
the ordinary, handsome, human woman had in- 
fected his discrimination? Again, was it possible 
to insinuate between his phrases such an influence 
as that with which he appeared to wrestle? Was 
it possible to divert, convert, pervert a theme such 
as his without touching a line of his text? 

His original maiden had indeed been intended 
for a foil, she had been designed to emphasize, by 
her absence of spirit, the intellectual supremacy of 
her rival, but she had not been meant to play the 
butt — the white lamb butchered in the cause of 
flippancy and arrogance; and at this point sus- 
picion doubled again, following a second trail. 
Was Vanda the arch-enemy after all? Already 
that night he had questioned the quality of her 
immunity from earthly weakness; now he ques- 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 169 

tioned, tentatively, the degree of her control of 
the situation. Unquestionably she had inflamed 
the nature of his attack upon insipidity, but had 
she brought her solution out at the point de- 
manded by her egoism, and if not, why not? If 
she and he were co-victims to some third influence, 
from whence did it emanate? Reluctantly his 
mind went backwards to find and reconsider that 
wheel within a wheel whose almost invisible 
movements had troubled his serenity at an early 
stage of rehearsal. 

It was a tormenting occupation, for the wheel 
moved among the most sensitive nerves in his 
being; it lacerated his vanity and seared his love 
of monarchy. The discipline was not to be en- 
dured for long at a stretch, and he was soon in 
retreat again down one of those inviting alleys 
that opportunity exposed so freely. It was plain 
that the jeweled heroine was having it all her 
own way with the public ; with her powers in full 
swing again she was carrying her spell-bound lis- 
teners clear out of the familiar country of ma- 


170 The Sinking Ship 

terialism. The head followed the heart, the heart 
followed the fancy, piping a tune too ravishing to 
resist. 

Not with fine words only, but with marvelous 
gestures, with telling changes of expression, she 
proceeded to dispose of her enemy. 

You would call,” she said, sweeping the still 
figure on the dais with a scornful glance, ‘‘ and 
none would answer; you would laugh and echo 
would repeat the laugh as the chill walls of a mine 
repeat the cries of the entombed miners. The 
five senses in you, that I have pampered like five 
beloved children, would fling themselves on that 
travesty of womanhood and recoil in puzzled 
terror. Oh, there are deaths and deaths, De 
Laure. There’s smothering, starvation, and the 
soldier’s death. It’s that I yield you to, it’s 
that I choose for you. You’ll die at dawn before 
one of those too numerous sword-points; you’ll 
expiate that small, intended wrong to me, that 
far, far greater intended wrong to yourself, in 
blood and pain. But listen ; as the Indian widows 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 171 

hurry bravely out to meet the spirits of their ad- 
venturing lords, so shall I too slip off this heavy, 
battered, ugly armor of the flesh the moment that 
I learn of your departure. Could I give, tell me, 
could I give a surer gauge of my good faith and 
my fidelity? We’ll meet, eternal lover, be you 
very sure of that; forces of mind of our quality, 
going one way, have no choice but to unite. We’ll 
find a wider stage before many hours have gone, 
and finer roles to play than those of Marquis and 
Marchioness. Don’t look so tragic; she’s only 
forced our hands. We must have made the ven- 
ture very soon or tasted disillusion. As long ago 
the elements were prisoned for a time in transient, 
human shapes, in forest oaks, in river and In 
flame, so we have been imprisoned, you and I, in 
these too common and restricted forms. You’ve 
tried to saddle me, if not yourself, with age, de- 
cay, incompetency, and all the time you should 
have spoken of maturity and evolution; for we 
transmigrate, through finer and ever finer bodies, 
until the gossamer texture of the last skin dis- 


The Sinking Ship 


172 

solves, releases us, and we swell the joyous ranks 
of the emancipated. Look well at us — at her — at 
me; weigh well the problem of our value, and de- 
cide which shares with you this last mortal hour. 
Who’s to fire the quivering pulse to its last out- 
burst of human ecstasy ? ” 

The instinct of the listening boy was meshed, 
not in the enthusiasm natural to the occasion, but 
in that secret doubt he did not dare to force into 
the open. In every movement of the lithe and 
beautiful body, in the play of the graceful 
features, in the witching intonations of the golden 
voice he had loved so long, he now seemed to de- 
tect proof after proof of the illegal union of 
powers forbidden by the higher law to amal- 
gamate, but in the full house one could truly have 
heard the dropping of the much-quoted pin. 
Such faces as the light revealed were white and 
tense and unfamiliar. The little mystic in the 
upper circle put his hand once again to his wet 
forehead with a murmur of “ I told you so for 
she was telling of the Trend, of the cracking of 


The Wheel Within the^ Wheel 173 

the ice of convention, of the irresistible, belated 
upward rush, not of stray emotions, but of life it- 
self. In the history of the past there had been an 
occasional rumble, a puff of smoke, the promise, 
but never the fulfilment of earthquake; now it was 
coming. There had been signs and portents it 
was impossible any longer to ignore or to explain 
away; spirit had whispered to spirit of the 
pressure in the atmosphere, of the enmd of the 
century, of the shorter and shorter period of every 
cult, the demand for rest, for the simple life, for 
the new religion. What were these but the con- 
fessions of human inadequacy to maintain any 
longer the pretense of accepting the existing 
statutes of condition? Even the physical aspect 
of men and women emphasized the end of the 
tether; nerves were giving way, not here and 
there, but everywhere; matter was decomposing 
under the onslaught of mind. 

As the will of the uncertain man gave way be- 
fore the will of the radiantly certain woman, so 
the will of the community, of which his was but 


174 Sinking Ship 

too typical, was persuaded to let go its frenzied 
grip of false realism, was coaxed to accept, with 
him, a new solution of the tangle of existence. 
The musical bass note blended well with that poig- 
nant, female song of victory. The pace increased 
as the scene was worked up with inimitable skill 
to its fine if vague conclusion, and, when the cur- 
tain fell, it was obvious that the gold of a great 
popular success had been hit. “ But what did 
they applaud ? the young man asked himself as, 
dragged by Vanda to the front of the stage, he 
faced the ordeal of a public ovation. 

Was it enlightenment or was it hypnotism? 
Looking from one heated face to another his in- 
ward melancholy increased. Was this the goal 
for which he had aimed? Was this the Nirvana 
of those who surrendered the essence of them- 
selves to the cause of progression ? He looked at 
the woman beside him, nod, nodding her blonde 
head in exuberant appreciation of the salvoes of a 
perspiring crowd. He had toiled to exalt her, 
and she believed herself exalted, but, in the depths 


The Wheel Within the Wheel 175 

of his heart, he was setting the laurel wreath of 
achievement on a very different head. But that 
head had vanished, and nobody, save himself, ap- 
peared to remember it; nobody, at all events, 
raised a call for the white girl in the stained gown, 
and the drama moved on to its last conclusion, to 
that necessary last act that so rarely escapes the 
reproach of bathos.’’ But Hadden’s Sinking 
Ship ” was floated without any such disturbing 
label. The charm held, and suddenly the intui- 
tion of the young dramatist yielded to it. His 
subjective self, attacked at a vulnerable point by 
this jubilant concourse of people, saw fit to col- 
lapse, and swiftly a haze spread over the theater, 
through which the beauty and the enthusiasm of 
the women, the more tempered but no less im- 
pressive approval of the men, began to shine with 
intoxicating effect; and, the cup of adulation once 
accepted, dreams, sweet and wild and seductive as 
those that the lotus provokes, began to wrap his 
tired mind in a veil of blissful lethargy. 

‘‘ To supper, to supper ! ” was the cry of his 


176 The Sinking Ship 

elated companions, and his imagination, worsted 
but not quite ruled into submission, found a sin- 
ister pleasure in a free translation : To the 
Brocken, to the Brocken! ” to the Witches’ Sab- 
bath I ” to wine and wile I ” “ to serenade and 
sleep! ” to the breast of Venus and the feet of 
Circe ! ” “ to the haunt of frailty and the bourne 
of force ! ” to compromise, the fairyland of 
license, whose password is the relaxation of a 
single moral muscle ! ” 


CHAPTER X 


RIDING LIGHT 

A LARGE and heterogeneous collection of per- 
sons took supper that night in Barkston Gardens, 
and the round table had once more been at- 
tractively decorated, on this occasion with Iceland 
poppies. Petals of rosy glass, scarcely to be dis- 
tinguished from those of the flowers they were 
intended to represent, circled the electric light, 
and a strip of looking-glass formed an effective 
centerpiece, reflecting each and all of the dainty 
table attributes, mirroring the dishes of fruit and 
the gay faces of the guests. 

Exuberance in every form was concentrated 
here, and the remainder of the room was in dark- 
ness, out of which soft-footed servants brought 
relays of tempting and much-needed provender. 

Renshaw found himself placed between his 
177 


178 The Sinking Ship 

hostess and a little dancer, fresh from her nightly 
triumph at the halls, and, as Vanda was accord- 
ing her attention to a man of ambassadorial aspect 
on her other side, it was evident he was expected 
to devote himself to the stranger. Her first cry, 
however, was for caviare on toast, and, to his 
amusement, as well as his chagrin, she made no 
response whatever to his civilities until her per- 
emptory tapping on the table brought the waiter 
and the champagne. Having eaten and drunk, 
she turned to him and shrugged a bare shoulder 
with what might pass for a coquettish form of 
apology. 

Lord, I was thirsty and hungry too. I could 
have eaten you five minutes ago! Finished my 
last show at ten o’clock, and it’s after twelve. 
Sole, isn’t it ? ” 

She turned eagerly to welcome the proffered 
dish. 

“ I do wish they wouldn’t roll it up in these 
scrimpy bits, all sauce and decoration,” she com- 
plained. ‘‘ Give me a good old fried fellow, with 


Riding Light 179 

his honest backbone running down his back — 
something to come and go upon.” 

He laughed and leaned forward to examine the 
menu, not ill-pleased to find in her a gourmande 
of the frank order, and aware, now that he had a 
moment for consideration, that his own appetite 
had acquired edge. 

“ We’re not to come short to-night, signorina, 
if this program speaks the truth, the whole 
truth and nothing but the truth.” 

“Signorina?” She curled a disdainful lip. 
“ There’s nothing Italian about me, unless it’s my 
temper, and you can get that just as hot and a lot 
cheaper in Whitechapel. I’m plain Miss Grimm 
— Kitty to my friends, only, of course, they 
wouldn’t let me dance to a vulgar bit of a name 
like that! Salt, please — and, waiter. I’ll trouble 
you for some more knives. You don’t catch me 
chivying my food round with one hand, whether 
it’s fashionable or whether it isn’t. I get my 
clothes in Bond Street, Mr. Renshaw, but I get 
my manners ready-made a bit farther east, as 


i8o The Sinking Ship 

you’d find out for yourself if I wasn’t wise enough 
to own up.” 

Again he laughed, his mood lightening further 
under the influence of the good food and this 
promise of easy intercourse. 

‘‘ Tell me who we all are, Miss Kitty. I’m an 
outsider. There’s a mixed look about us. Are 
we distinguished, or only rebellious ? ” 

Her eye followed his leisurely the round of the 
table. 

I think we’ve all made something or other, 
money or mischief or talk. That’s Lady Alice 
Finder in the place of honor.” 

So it is. I’m by way of knowing her, I be- 
lieve. She lives next door to my people, and it’s 
a vexed question between her and my mother who 
can run up the longest bill with the dressmaker; 
it’s a still more vexed one who pays for dressing 
— not in the literal sense, they don’t either of 
them do that, but in the ornamental. Personally, 
and quite without prejudice, I yield the palm to 
the mater. Does she come here much ? ” 


Riding Light i8i 

Lady Alice? Well, more than Mr. Finder 
likes, they say.” 

Finder — Finder? I can’t recall a husband. 
One saw innumerable men on her front-door steps, 
but they hadn’t any of ’em the look of a hus- 
band.” 

‘‘ He’s Scotch,” Miss Grimm informed him be- 
tween her numerous and very large mouthfuls of 
chicken patty. “ Real old Scotch, you know. 
* Keeps the Sawbath — and anything else he can 
get but she don’t seem inclined to let him keep 
her too close.” 

“ And the worried-looking man on her other 
side, who can’t get a word in? ” 

Is O’Gorry, an Irishman, and typical again. 
‘ Doesn’t know what he wants, and won’t be 
happy till he gets it.’ He’s been weighed by a 
good many of us and found wanting, conse- 
quently you’ll always find him on the deaf side of 
somebody. Now with me it’s the other way; I 
sit tight and everything comes round. I’m the 
seventh child of a seventh child. Hulloa ! 


The Sinking Ship 


182 

What’s this? Plovers’ eggs? What did I tell 
you, Mr. Renshaw? Why, I could live on ’em 
cooked this way; and it’s the same with every- 
thing,” she added, peppering vigorously. ‘‘ The 
luck’s always on my side. When I was a kid I 
wanted to dance, and my people (drapers in West- 
bourne Grove; chapelites, and as starchy as 
they’re made) said, ‘ Not at no price.’ But, bless 
you, I didn’t listen to ’em. I bustled round and 
bothered the lives out of all the agents in town, 
till, for peace and quietness’ sake, they got me 
stuck on somewhere, and the rest was child’s play. 
I wormed myself to the front by degrees; and as 
for mother, well, I put five shillings under her 
nose one Saturday night, and I’ve never heard no 
more about the damning of my soul from that 
day to this. Here, old man, you bring that 
dish back again. I wasn’t shaking my head 
at you, but at the ways of this mercenary 
world.” 

Story obeyed with reluctance. He knew the 
lady well, and his most cherished dainties had 


Riding Light 183 

suffered punishment at her hands on many occa- 
sions. 

‘‘ Fm drawing my thirty pounds a week now,” 
she added to her neighbor. “ There's a few done 
better and a lot done worse. Here's to all the 
folks on top ! " 

Roguishly she ogled him over the edge of the 
glass; roguishly she looked to right and left to 
catch stray glances of approval from such of her 
male friends present as were not too engrossed 
to respond; but Hadden, keeping a shrewd eye 
on her, noted that there was one point, and one 
point only, towards which her bright eye never 
seemed to wander. 

“ Can you tell me the name of the gentleman 
to the left of us — the gentleman with the basilisk 
glare ? '' 

‘‘ It's probably Mr. Hermann H«rz," she an- 
swered after rather a prolonged pause; but still 
she did not look in the direction indicated. 

Do you know him ? '' he asked with an in- 
crease of suspicion. 


184 


The Sinking Ship 


“ Yes; everybody knows him — everybody who 
is anybody/' she added a trifle maliciously. 

He's a financier — a successful financier; he has 
shares in pretty nearly every enterprise going, 
your ‘ boss's ' theater included. I expect he’s 
busy sizing you up at this present moment." 

I think it’s on you that his very evil eye ap- 
pears to be fixed." 

Well, why shouldn't it ? I'm a public char- 
acter. Ever seen me dance ? " 

‘‘ Once or twice, but ” 

“ But you don’t care for dancing," she finished 
for him, eager to turn the point at which he 
aimed. Oh, don't trouble to tell fibs. I don’t 
care twopence for your long-winded dramas; I 
wouldn’t be paid to sit one of them out, so we’re 
quits; and if you’re not interested in my doings, 
you’re interested in me," she added audaciously. 

‘‘ Immensely interested. Tell me " 

“ I’m out of your line," she broke in hurriedly. 
For one thing you’ve never met a woman with 
such an honest appetite." She helped herself 


Riding Light 185 

liberally to trifle, and proceeded to poke her fork 
cautiously into it. “ If I land on the ring, Mr. 
Renshaw, I don’t know what I’ll do.” 

‘‘ I thought the thimble was the hHe noire/' 

“ Good heavens ! I’ve got it ! No, it’s only a 
macaroon ! The thimble’s bad, of course, but the 
ring’s worse to the ladies of our profession. I 
want the sixpence. Luck, you know. And here 
it is!” 

Triumphantly she fished out the coin from a 
pool of cream with her fingers, wiped it on a lace 
handkerchief, and dropped it down the neck of 
her decolletee gown. 

‘‘ What are you laughing at ? My purse ? It’s 
so handy. Everything goes in and nothing ever 
falls out. I’m too laced-up for that; and the odds 
and ends I collect in one evening would make a 
cat laugh. We meet queer parties, I can tell you, 
in our walk of life, and they give us a lot of 
queer presents when the wine’s in and the dis- 
cretion’s out. Not that I’m on the cadge,” she 
added quickly. “ To tell you the truth, IVe a 


The Sinking Ship 


1 86 

job to know what to do with all the rubbish I get 
foisted on to me. Fve got family heirlooms that 
it would be an insult to a decent frock to wear; 
but mother’s not so beastly particular. I wish 
you could see her in her Sunday rig-up ; brooches 
as big as saucers, rings with locks of hair in ’em, 
miniatures of other folks’ grandmothers set in 
paste. I can’t endure paste — shoddy stuff. Now 
these earrings are Brazilian, cost a cool hundred, 
and my friend bought them in the business way, 
so what they’d fetch in Regent Street I’ll leave 
you to guess.” 

He decided to focus his admiration on the 
pretty little ear she turned to him, rather than 
on the single stone adorning it, and Miss Kitty 
approved the decision. 

“ You do know how to make a woman purr,” 
she observed encouragingly; “most of them lay 
it on with a trowel because we weren’t born in 
the purple; won’t give us credit for knowing the 
real thing when we see it. Paste don’t deceive 
me, as I told you. I know when I’m being 


Riding Light 187 

stuffed, though it pays me now and again to pre- 
tend I don’t. Sure I’m not boring you ? ” 

I’ve not been so sure of anything for twenty- 
four hours.” 

“ I never ! And you the man of the moment.” 

** Oh, please,” he protested, disturbed by the 
shrill nature of the announcement. 

“ Why, there’s nobody here with the face to 
deny it; and if you come to consider how many 
moments go to a day, I don’t know that the com- 
pliment’s altogether overwhelming.” 

‘‘ Then you do come to consider some times? ” 

She gave him a look compounded of suspicion 
and defiance. 

“ Why not ? ” she said tartly. “ Considering 
don’t cost anything.” 

‘‘ Are you quite sure. Miss Kitty? ” 

For answer she tossed her head, and with a 
persistency for which he was himself at a loss to 
account, he pressed inquiry further. 

Well, then, suppose you satisfy an ancient 
speculation of mine; add a dozen years to your 


The Sinking Ship 


1 88 

age and tell me ” but with a cry of dismay she 

interrupted him. 

Add a dozen years to my age ? Never, never, 
never. Fm twenty-one — do you hear? — ^twenty- 
one, and I shan't be twenty-five until the year 
nineteen hundred and thirty, and not then unless 
my tongue and my wits and everything else about 
me has lost its cunning." 

Of course not. You shall be — you are Per- 
petua — the spirit of eternal motion, incapable of 
growing old or stiff. But the others? You’re 
the exception. But what becomes of them? Fve 
often wondered. One never seems to see or hear 
of an elderly dancer. Where do they go to? 
What do they turn into ? ’’ 

She drummed upon the table with her empty 
glass, but she was not calling for wine. 

“ Don’t tell me,’’ he resumed, fascinated by her 
air of subdued excitement, “ that they all turn 
into common or garden wives and mothers. It 
would be such a tame finale. Carmen with a 
perambulator strikes me as out of the drawing." 


Riding Light 189 

“ I might have known it/’ she said fiercely. ‘‘ I 
might have known you beastly dramatists couldn’t 
let us alone even in play-hours. You can’t take 
your own meals in peace, much less let us take 
ours. There you go, sticking your inquisitive 
fingers into us to see what we’re made of, how 
long we’re going to last; you’ll want to know 
who pays for us next; and I’ll tell you nothing. 
So, there ! ” 

Viciously she snatched a peach from the basket 
in front of her; she began to peel it, but her hands 
trembled, and there was water on her dark eye- 
lashes. 

“ I’m sorry. Miss Kitty.” 

‘‘ No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t do it; at least 
you’re only sorry you can’t turn us all inside 
out for your next play.” She dropped the peach 
and her silver knife and fork on the top of it. She 
pushed her plate aside and planted her bare elbows 
on the table, looking sideways at him with bright, 
reproachful, tear-dimmed eyes. 

‘‘ You’ve spoilt my supper for me, Mr. Ren- 


190 The Sinking Ship 

shaw; I couldn’t eat another thing to save my life. 
I suppose you think we all dance to perdition, as 
my Aunt Betsy used to say. Well, if you’d seen 
our show at sale time, I bet you’d have taken 
the risks and cleared out too.” 

Of course I should; and I don’t believe in 
perdition.” 

‘‘Don’t you? That’s awfully good of you. 
But what’s the difference between perdition and 
extermination? You’ve reminded me that we all 
get wiped out.” 

“ No; I only asked a question.” 

“ A question that you knew very well couldn’t 
have but one answer. I said I wouldn’t give it; 
but I will after all. There’s a poison,” she went 
on with startling solemnity, “ advertised to kill 
rats and mice, and not only to kill them, but to 
dispose of the carcases. It isn’t a pretty topic 
for a dining-room, but you would have it; it’s like 
that with most of us; when we’ve done our 
dancing, there’s so little of us left that it really 
doesn’t matter what becomes of it. Dancing isn’t 


Riding Light 191 

like the other arts; they’re supposed to enlarge 
the heart or mind, or whatever the thing is that 
gives you a vote for eternity ; but dancing enlarges 
nothing but your muscles. You put all your 
money into one stocking, or rather into two, and 
when they’re worn through the bank bursts and 
there’s an end of you. I don’t know that Aunt 
Betsy was far out after all.” 

The ruling passion threatened to keep his pity 
at bay, though he spoke more softly, more apol- 
ogetically. You mean a dancer must be light? ” 

“ The lighter she is the longer she lasts.” 

And a single dark thought,” he persisted, 
would be dangerous to her existence ? Is there 
a dark thought in your mind, Miss Kitty ? ” 

No,” she said with violence; I’m not such 
a fool as to let it in.” 

‘‘ A dark thought,” he repeated slowly, his eye 
roving to the far side of the table, a dark 
thought — -a dark man whom it’s inadvisable to no- 
tice ; the dark man who steals like a thief and lays 
a finger on one’s heart so that it weighs heavy. 


192 The Sinking Ship 

I see, I see; so that’s the reason you look all ways 
but one. Wise little Kitty to keep the financier 
safely outside. But tell me one thing more.” 

“ Yes,” she broke in with a change of aspect, a 
lightening of mood, “ I’ll tell you one thing more 
and only one; he doesn’t know he’s outside, and 
as long as he doesn’t know it’s all right; he thinks 
he’s in the heart of the city, such heart as it pos- 
sesses. He’s moving now; he coming up to 
take his evening stroll in it. You’ll have to make 
yourself scarce.” 

As she spoke the young Jew leaned over them 
from behind, and Hadden involuntarily rose in 
answer to his affable words of greeting. 

Others were on the move; chairs were pushed 
back or vacated. It was evident that smoke and 
relaxation were to be introduced. The room had 
been arranged with attention to the claims of dual 
privacy; seats in couples placed temptingly, dis- 
creetly. 

Certain of the guests remained at the table, 
Lady Alice among them, and, to Hadden’s sur- 


Riding Light 193 

prise, she favored him with an unmistakable in- 
vitation to approach her. Vanda, standing just 
behind, busy with the lighting of a cigarette, 
smiled down on them, seeming to listen absently 
to her friend’s overtures. 

The young man was reminded tactfully of old 
acquaintance, congratulated gracefully on his 
emancipation from what was termed our ele- 
gant treadmill.” Lady Alice was handsome, of 
the massive order, and, when it suited her, she 
could be charming. She seemed to know by in- 
stinct precisely what tactics would appeal to her 
audience, and she proceeded to dose this new and 
promising recruit to fortune with flattery of the 
kind best suited to a juvenile and yet fastidious 
palate. 

More than once she exchanged a covert glance 
of amusement with Vanda, for he was presently 
dancing to her subtle pipe with every evidence of 
satisfaction. He was no match for the two 
women, one active, one passive, both equally bent 
on turning his by no means too steady head. Be- 


194 The Sinking Ship 

tween them they reinvoked the atmosphere of the 
theater — ^the moment when his senses had suc- 
cumbed. Again he saw the faces of gay and 
beautiful women through the veil that kept crudity 
at bay; again his eye was wooed by color, by 
scent; again he was a lotus-dreamer of the East, 
sinking yet deeper than before into the luxury of 
self-forgetfulness; conscience and consciousness 
alike grew faint and his old enemy ceased to 
trouble and inflame. To sweet music he re- 
approached a state of intoxication, but failed to 
enter it, for intervention, as sudden as it was sim- 
ple, came from an unexpected quarter. A 
draught of cool and pure night air pierced the at- 
mosphere, cutting its keen way to his dull senses 
through smoke and patchouli. Lady Alice had 
turned her head to whisper to her hostess — a tale 
just a degree too spicy for the masculine ear — 
and on an impulse he could neither analyze nor 
disobey, he sprang to his feet, muttering incoher- 
ently of the heat, of headache, of a need to follow 
this inciting, invisible messenger to the window. 


Riding Light 195 

It stood ajar, and in the gloom of the balcony he 
could discern the outline of the person who had 
taken shelter there. His mind was not suffi- 
ciently alert to whisper of definite expectation or 
occult influence. If a counter-spell had been em- 
ployed his subservience to it was already on the 
wane, for he joined her with an air of swaggering 
indifference. 

‘‘ Is it permitted to bring smoke into this — this 
superior region ? ” But, as once before, his 
grandiloquence, ignored by her simplicity, ap- 
peared to strike back upon himself with unpleas- 
ant force. 

‘‘Of course; mother allows smoke every- 
where.'’ 

She moved, however, to make room on the seat 
beside her, though he feigned not to note the in- 
vitation, and established himself on the iron rail- 
ing of the balcony, from which position it was 
possible to look down on her or back into the il- 
lumined room from which he had made so un- 
dignified and inexplicable an escape. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

“ Too hot for you inside? ” 

‘‘ It’s nicer here.” 

Infinitely nicer,” he replied, cudgeling his 
brains for a form of intercourse that should 
satisfy both his curiosity and the self-esteem she 
invariably contrived to ruffle. 

The man of the moment was not to be de- 
frauded of the pleasure of that moment; she must 
be persuaded to throw her handful of incense 
along with the rest or give a satisfactory reason 
for refusal, and the only satisfactory reason he 
could sight was her mental limitation. 

“ Miss Conquest — Miss Sibyl — I came out to — 
to offer my congratulations. There were mo- 
ments — I can assure you honestly there were mo- 
ments when your performance struck me as really 
196 


The Undiscovered Country 197 

remarkable.” He paused to enjoy a modest dis- 
claimer, but she made no response whatever, and 
he went on less suavely. 

“ It was so remarkable that I’m tempted to ask 
you bluntly what you were up to ? ” 

What makes you think I was up to any- 
thing?” 

The embarrassment was his, and he looked 
away back into the room he had left, trying to dis- 
tinguish certain of the figures in it through the 
thick columns of smoke in which it was now en- 
veloped. 

Your stock,” he replied at length, with the 
violence of one at a disadvantage. 

Why couldn’t she take offense? Why did she 
sit so abnormally still? Why couldn’t she wrig- 
gle or twist those passive hands lying in her lap? 
Why did she look at him with such intensity ? 

** It’s quite certain,” he added, with an effort 
after a lighter tone, that you and I are not of 
one mind. You don’t seem inclined to take an in- 
terest in the workings of mine, so it only remains 


198 The Sinking Ship 

for me to investigate the workings of yours. If 
you’ll allow me I’ll come and sit beside you. At 
the present moment I’m trying to look two ways 
at once.” 

She moved her white skirts an inch or two, and, 
throwing the remnant of his cigarette into the 
street below, he took the new place. 

‘‘ That’s better,” he remarked. “ I’ve been 
trying to keep one eye on our lively friends in 
there, and the other on you, with the result that I 
can’t take fair stock of either party.” 

A silence supervened. After a few seconds his 
eye, growing accustomed to the darkness, could 
single out of it the shapes of the trees in the 
square garden. He was not sure, however, that 
his change of position was to prove beneficial. He 
found more difficulty than ever in attacking, much 
less dispelling, her detestable serenity. 

The thoughts of youth,” he ventured mock- 
ingly, ‘‘ are long, long thoughts. Do you ever 
trust any one with yours? ” 

Am I to trust you? ” 


The Undiscovered Country 199 

“ I’m a dramatist — at least I suppose I shall be 
by to-morrow. You might do worse.” 

“ But would the tale be exciting enough for 
the British public, Mr. Renshaw ? ” 

“ Depends how it is told. One would have to 
embroider a bit. But I’m convinced something 
could be made of your talents. One day soon I 
shall write you a curtain-raiser.” 

“ Thank you.” Her apathy was not to be ig- 
nored, but he found a translation acceptable to his 
vanity. 

‘‘ Poor child ! You’re dead beat, aren’t you, 
after all those interminable rehearsals? Thank 
heaven they’re things of the past. Thank heaven 
for this cool and delightful balcony. What a night, 
or rather, what a morning, and what a pity one 
always has to go to bed just when nature is at 
her loveliest. Look at that sky splashed pink and 
gold. If I were a free agent I’d stretch a ham- 
mock under the trees down there and sleep to the 
rustle of their million leaves. Yes, I’m serious. 
Miss Sibyl; I’m a ‘ lover of trees,’ and my ghost 


200 


The Sinking Ship 


will certainly walk in pursuit of them. Fd a 
hope,” he added ingratiatingly, “ that yours might 
be willing to accompany me. This garden now. 
You’ve looked down into it all your life — all your 
lonely, innocent child-life.” 

Surely, he thought, this suggestion must arouse 
the sentimental instinct, the instinct that should 
connect her with her kind, dissever her from this 
attitude of detachment he feared and distrusted. 

A lonely child ? I was never that. What 
makes you think so ? ” 

With an effort he concealed his disappointment, 
preserved something of the romantic inflection in 
his voice. 

‘‘ Perhaps because I was such a lonely little beg- 
gar myself. Not that I complain; brothers and 
sisters have plenty of disadvantages. I doubt if I 
should have written a line if Pd been one of seven. 
I should have been compelled to attend to my ma- 
terial interests instead of poking my speculative 
nose into the moss to find the trail of the elusive 
but seductive fairy.” 


The Undiscovered Country 201 

‘‘ You believe in fairies, Mr. Renshaw? 

“ Don’t you? ” 

“ I don’t know anything about them.” 

“ Then if you can’t see the supernatural, and 
you won’t see the natural ” — he jerked a thumb 
over his shoulder — “ it appears to me that you’re 
left with rather a limited view, unless so be that 
you’re a sphinx — a stone thing, you know, that 
spends its time staring out into the desert, and 
thinking of all the good times it had a thousand 
years ago.” 

“ No, I’m not a sphinx,” she told him gravely. 
“ My good times will never turn to stone.” 

Again he fell to silence, and presently he found 
a species of assault more compatible with his true 
dignity than any he had yet chanced upon. 

“ Shall I own that I can’t diagnose you prop- 
erly, and that my failure is irritating me ? ” 

I’m ready to answer any question, Mr. Ren- 
shaw.” 

‘‘ Then tell me what you were trying to do 
with that little Winifred of mine to-night?” 


202 The Sinking Ship 

“ I was trying to bring out the life in her.” 

But she hasn’t any.” 

“ She’s as much, exactly as much, as I have.” 

“ You? ” he stammered. “ What and who are 
you to talk so boldly of life? ” 

‘‘ Don’t you know who and what I am? ” 

“ You’re a very beautiful girl,” he said, car- 
ried yet further from the region of self-control 
by the strange look of her; but she leaned sud- 
denly away from him, her eyes dilating with 
horror. 

“ No — no; not that,” she whispered. 

“ Then a most impossible girl,” he declared with 
vehemence. ‘‘ A veritable figure-head for con- 
tradiction and chaos. You’re not a play-actress, 
you’re a siren, not a woman. What remains? A 
creature that can’t live on land and dies in the 
water. I was a fool to follow you.” 

“ You can go back.” 

‘‘ I can’t, and you know it. You’re in the 
proud position of being undiscovered country, and 
I’m in the detestable one of a discoverer who has 


The Undiscovered Country 203 

sighted new land and can’t find a way into the 
harbor.” 

‘‘ You can’t go back,” she said, and for the first 
time he saw the light of ecstacy in her brown eyes. 
'‘You can’t go back; then you’ll have to come 
on.” 

She laid a hand upon his arm, and he became 
aware of a current, he could only liken to elec- 
tricity, running upwards towards the center of his 
emotional system. 

" Where do I come to ? ” he asked feebly, al- 
most childishly. 

" Think, and you’ll remember.” 

“ I am thinking, and I can’t. Sibyl, be merci- 
ful. See, I’m not posing any longer. I’m giving 
up my prejudices; I’m giving up my friends. I’m 
in deadly earnest now. The puzzle is beginning 
to obsess. Where do you take me? Where do 
you come from? Where do you go to when the 
talk down here doesn’t please you? Whom do 
you look at with that soft, far look to the right or 
the left? Who is the friend at court?” 


204 


The Sinking Ship 


Think, only think, and you’ll remember.” 

‘^Remember? What? Is it an old friend of 
mine ? ” 

‘‘ The oldest and the best. But you’re not look- 
ing in the right direction. Don’t look at me, look 
towards the east; breathe slowly, breathe in the 
magic of this summer night and you’ll remem- 
ber.” 

‘‘ Magic ! ” he echoed, but she shook her 
head. 

‘‘ I shouldn’t have said that; magic is the wrong 
word — at least it has been used wrong. It has 
come to mean black magic, and mine is 
white.” 

‘‘ We’re mad ! ” he said with sudden impa- 
tience. “ That’s the answer to the riddle — ^mad- 
ness. We’ll cover our disgrace with fine names 
though. I’m a genius and you’re a — a Joan of 
Arc.” 

“ No ; the others are mad. Listen to them, look 
at them, and look at me.” 

‘‘ You told me not to look at you, Sibyl, and 


The Undiscovered Country 205 

you were wiser then. When I look at you this 
solid universe begins to rock; you’re too strong or 
too strange for me and my education. You’re 
cutting me off from my old points of view ; you’ve 
done it before. To-night, a few hours ago, you 
were at work undermining. There was a wheel 
within a wheel, as I suspected. I can feel the 
pitiless whirr of it now up my arm. She and I 
wanted to go one way and you wanted to go — 
you went — the other. And you must explain; 
there’s a limit to the claims of mystery, and you 
have passed it. Will you never speak? You’ve 
taken everything; will you give nothing 
in exchange? There’s a door, here, under 
my fingers and I can’t find the catch; you must 
open it.” 

Hadden, dear Hadden!” 

He had heard his name uttered in many tender 
variations of tone, but in none quite like this. He 
flushed and paled again ; a fine instinct started up, 
stood at attention, dropped inert, for, swift upon 
its track, there came a coarser one, a giant figure, 


2 o 6 The Sinking Ship 

product of the night and its egotistical influence. 
The door was open — a door, at all events, was 
open. He loved her; it was the commonest secret 
in the world. 

“ So it was love, Sibyl; and to think that I 
should be so slow to guess. But that was your 
fault; you would give me none of the signs, 
though you were netted, from the very first, as 
surely as myself. None but a lover could have 
said my name that way. You love me; but where 
are you going to with all that love? Why do 
you still look away? What does it mean this — 
this last evasion of the natural law ? 

“ It means,” she answered with evident diffi- 
culty, “ that Tm trying, just for a minute, to do 
what you tried to do — to look two ways at once; 
but I mustn’t, I daren’t, I won’t.” 

“ No, indeed. You’re to look my way, now 
and always. Dare you say that you don’t love 
me?” 

‘‘ I love you dearly ! 


Ah, that’s all to matter.’^ 


The Undiscovered Country 207 


“ No.’^ 

‘‘No?’’ he repeated with tender mockery. 

“ Love — ^your sort of love — isn’t everything,” 
she said quickly, as though she feared an inter- 
ruption. “ It’s hardly anything except, perhaps, 
a ladder.” 

“ Sibyl!” 

“Hush! You’ve got to listen. You’ve come 
far, but you must come much farther.” 

“ No,” he said with passion; “ I’ll come no 
farther in that profitless direction. Love as it 
stands is quite fantastic enough for me. I’m not 
going to gild a lily of that type. I love you! I 
tried to look over your dear head; I tried, like a 
little boy at a first party, to dance with somebody 
less simple, less guileless and less good, but Fate 
wasn’t to be outwitted in that fashion. Here I 
am, a blind man led by the faithful dog of in- 
stinct, beside you, at your feet. I want you, 
Sibyl, I want you; I’ve always wanted you, al- 
ways hunted you, little friend and teacher and 
wife.” 


2 o 8 The Sinking Ship 

‘‘ And are you free to hunt me, to take me, 
Hadden Renshaw ? 

Involuntarily he shrank under the reproach of 
her dark eyes. 

‘‘Free? What do you mean? Do you think 
— do you dare to think I’d come to you if — if I 
were not ? ” 

“ You didn’t mean to come,” she reminded 
him; “you didn’t want to come. This love that 
you talk so proudly of was the last thing you 
meant to offer me.” 

“ I swear ” but he got no farther. Sensi- 

tive as he was to expression, it was impossible for 
him to ignore or to mistake the meaning of hers. 
Like a harp beneath the fingers of a rough hand, 
her whole delicate personality seemed to vibrate in 
tremulous disclaimer of the oath he would have 
offered. 

“ Sibyl, Sibyl ! ” he began once more in a voice 
compounded of protest and apology. “ I know, 
dimly I know, there’s a code you don’t consider, 
and another that you’re going to try and compel 


The Undiscovered Country 209 

me to take into account; but it’s too absurd. 
You’re thinking of my promise to her. She told 
you. No, she could never have told you; you’ve 
guessed it; but you haven’t guessed that it’s very 
different from the one I make to you. You’re 
putting a quite incorrect and romantic value on a 
boy’s first, wild fancy for, not a woman, but a 
great artist. If she told you anything of 
this ” 

She’s told me nothing,” the girl interrupted 
sharply; “there’s no need. I haven’t your wis- 
dom, and I haven’t hers; but I’ve other wisdom, 
Hadden, and I know that you’ve given her some- 
thing that you can’t take away like this and hand 
on to me ; it’s hers by law, by my law, until of her 
own free will she gives it back to you.” 

“ Gives it back,” he groaned. “ Do these 
painted women give anything back so long as 
there’s a pennyworth of profit in it? Oh, I’m a 
brute to turn like this on the hand I’ve fawned 
upon; but if you knew, if you only knew, the 
height from which I’ve toppled to-night; if you 


210 


The Sinking Ship 


only guessed what an unholy bargain it is to which 
you talk so prettily of tying me/' 

“ We’ll make it holy.” 

So curious and exalted was her look that, for a 
full minute, he could find no kind of contradic- 
tion. 

‘‘ You’re an idealist,” he said at last, but in 
futile fashion. You’d put a coat of virtue on 
to anything, however base; but it wouldn’t stay 
there long. Why can’t you show discrimination ? 
Why can’t you be content to exercise your faculty 
in a fair field ? My love’s a fair field enough. I 
— I’d come a long way to meet your fancies. I 
belong to them. I see you, like a princess in a 
high prison tower, calling, out of darkness, for 
rescue, for love and life; and I ride through 
dangers innumerable to the foot of the tower, and 
you let down your hair and I bury my face in it, 
and all the sweet lost memories and beliefs of my 
childhood come back to me in the scent of it, and 
all the happiness and the hope that I so nearly sold 
to Delilah; and then you draw the sacred stuff 


The Undiscovered Country 21 1 

away, and you bid me go. Is it kind, little 
princess; is it fair? These stories ought to have 
a happy ending.” 

We’re not in fable-land.” 

No; I forgot,” he broke in roughly; ‘‘and 
you don’t believe in the doll, the sphinx, or the 
fairy.” 

Because I’ve something finer to believe in. 
The doll is stuffed with sawdust, the sphinx hasn’t 
any stuffing at all, and the fairy is capricious, she 
turns the prince into a toad sometimes. Think 
of somebody who only turns the toads into 
princes.” 

“ The problem is too wide even for my adven- 
turous imagination.” 

“ Poor boy ! To have seen so much and never 


to have seen the angel.” 


CHAPTER XII 


‘‘ ALMOST THOU PERSUADEST ME ” 

It was assuredly the last answer he had ex- 
pected. 

“ Religion,” he said, as soon as he had got his 
breath, “ religion in this house, of all unlikely 
places! Well, go on, tell me of the God who 
walks in your garden there at eventide, spite of 
the Cockney nursemaid.” 

You can tell yourself all that you care to 
know.” 

Oh, I can tell myself the stock legends, of 
course; and Pll allow them to be dramatic. The 
Bible’s too well and too diversely written ever to 
be relegated to the shelf; but it’s also too full of 
contradictory statements quite to satisfy one’s 
reason.” 

He stopped, aware that her attention had 


313 


‘‘Almost Thou Persuadest Me” 213 

strayed from him. With her head against the 
back of the seat, she was gazing up into the vast 
blue dome above them, at the stars, pale in the 
light of the coming day. 

A nun,” he sneered in desperation, ‘‘ or more 
probably her stage counterpart. Here, it seems, 
is the play-actress breaking out at the one and 
only spot left unexploited. Vanda has familiar- 
ized us with all the roles but this; this has been 
overlooked; and — ^there’s money in it, or what 
amounts to the same thing, there’s power. Wit- 
ness my discomfiture. I’m hot and you’re cool. 
Still, don’t fancy I’m owning up to defeat. I’m 
not beaten yet. By hook or by crook I mean to 
get into this city of reserve and mystery. The 
guns are big, but I’m determined to prove them 
property guns. It’s useless to point them at me; 
it’s useless to declaim the familiar ‘ die villain ! ’ 
of melodrama; you must substantiate this boast 
of superiority. There’s a goodly array of phil- 
osophers and scientists to sweep out of the way 
to begin with.” 


214 


The Sinking Ship 


Each sweeps the other out,” she returned 
calmly, “ and even the boldest of them doesn’t 
begin his argument at the beginning or carry it to 
the end; they build colleges and technical schools, 
but they don’t build houses of God; they teach 
earth knowledge, and the other knowledge gets 
pushed out.” 

“ But what is this other knowledge ? Your 
line’s too vague for the normal intellect to follow, 
much less attack.” 

‘‘ Leave what you call the normal intellect be- 
hind; leave argument behind; ‘ be still, and know 
that I am God.’ ” 

Silenced, awed by the intensity of her aspect, 
he became the prey of a notion more disturbing 
than any that had gone before. It seemed to his 
inflamed imagination that she was creating — had, 
indeed, already created — a zone of atmosphere 
free of all egotistical feeling, and that in this zone 
some force invisible was about to manifest; it 
was as though her passive frame were being 
yielded to the majestic influence of the night 


‘‘Almost Thou Persuadest Me” 215 

for the purpose of supernatural demonstration. 

“ The Bible again,” he scoffed. “ A fine and a 
cryptic utterance; but there’s nothing proven. 
We’re bombarded with these phrases; we’re in- 
toxicated by tales of jugglery until we forget 
natural law. Here’s a bush on fire and here’s a 
rock full of water. We’re worsted by quantity 
of adventure, not by quality or veracity. It’s that 
insatiable demand in us for the impossible, it’s the 
cry for miracle, that makes us the all too willing 
victims of chicanery.” 

“ You think — ^you really think the miracles are 
over? No; you think they never happened at 
all?” 

“ I accept a symbolical value in the story of 
them.” 

“ The water never turned to wine ? ” 

‘‘ I fancy, if history were sifted carefully, we 
should find it wine in the beginning.” 

‘‘And the blind, the sick, the lame, never 
touched the hem of Christ’s garment and were 
healed?” 


2 i 6 The Sinking Ship 

“ They were healed, doubtless, of hysterical 
tendencies.’’ 

Poor boy! ” she murmured as before, and as 
before her face quivered as at a cruel touch. 

“ I lay the curse of poverty elsewhere,” he 
broke out angrily. ‘‘ If I speak contemptuously 
of the figure of your idolatry, it’sbecause I’ve seen 
blood spilt over it; I’ve seen good men ruined by 
fanaticism and superstition. Credulity such as 
yours is gas; it can’t make any definite mark; it’s 
not independent for one thing. You listen to the 
music of the spheres, which, being interpreted, 
would prove about as instructive and practical as 
the gabble of the ‘ bandar-log ’ ; but you always 
come down for meals; you’re fed by the gov- 
ernment you want to betray; the animal preserva- 
tion of life counts first with you as with the rest 
of us.” 

“ I can’t find the answer to that,” she said, but 
without a trace of discomfiture; “ it’s there, but I 
can’t find the words for it. I only know 
that what you want to call credulity is faith. 


‘‘Almost Thou Persuadest Me” 217 

and that life, eternal life, is inseparable 
from it.’’ 

“ Then remove the mountain, Sibyl. Prove 
the value of this high-sounding creed. You love 
me and I love you. It’s a love, moreover, founded 
on all that’s best in human nature.” 

“ I know, I know ; but we can’t take it this 
way.” 

Then show me a way in which it can be 
taken.” 

‘‘ I’m trying to, but you’re so slow, so ob- 
stinate. Don’t you see that you must let go my 
hand if — if you would keep my heart?” 

Good Lord ! The looking-glass theory with 
a vengeance; sacrifice for the mere drear love of 
mutilation. I’m to let go your hand and hold on 
to hers because (believing it the hand of abstract 
and maligned womanhood) I set my first kiss on 
it. Have you forgotten, child of romance, that 
she has a husband ? ” 

‘‘ No, Hadden, she’s nothing, nothing in all the 
world but the one wonderful thought that we. 


2i8 


The Sinking Ship 


the young, are true to her; the wonderful thought 
that she isn’t a doomed ship, and we the rats 
that run from it to find luxury and life elsewhere. 
Why do you frown and fight? Why won’t you 
believe what I tell you — what you have often 
told yourself in the long-ago? Do I look 
madder than those poor people in the room 
behind ? ” 

“ No,” he said uncertainly; “ but that’s the pull 
of youth. You haven’t been knocked about 
yet.” 

“ I never shall be knocked about. You know 
it. You run away from the conviction, but you 
always come back again. You want the secret 
of my peace, the secret of my strength, and you’ll 
know no rest till you get it. I’m not a girl, young 
and pretty, to be dressed up and taken to church 
and to court, and perhaps to the Continent, to be 
treated as an appendage to your career. I’ve a 
career of my own. I’m a power, part of a power, 
that is; I’m in harmony with all this,” she turned 
her head slowly, seeming to exhale the fragrance 


‘‘Almost Thou Persuadest Me” 219 

and the majesty of the night. “You laugh at the 
thought of religion in this house; but do you think 
— oh, do you really think there’s any house into 
which knowledge cannot come ? I think the pity 
of God sends it to the dark houses first of all. I 
know it came to this — to me — when I was so little 
I could scarcely lisp my prayers. The sense 
came before the words. There was no one to 
interfere, no one to teach me wrong; I was what 
the world would call a lonely child. Not a 
human soul, save a careless nursery governess, 
ever came over the boundary fence of familiarity. 
I was free from the common earth-pressure. 
There was only my will to suppress; and to yield 
it each day, each hour, to the great Spirit of Om- 
nipotence became easier and easier; one gave so 
little and took so much; lost the cheap life and 
gained the priceless one. More and more freely 
the power worked, until — until I seemed to walk 
upon the water; I touched the brown staff and it 
put forth buds; over and over again the impossi- 
ble (as the others called it) became the possible, 


220 The Sinking Ship 

and I saw miracle, the lost age of miracle, bloom- 
ing again.” 

Second sight ? ” he suggested, but not with 
much conviction. 

‘‘No; yours, theirs, is the second sight; this 
is the first. Come near, look close at me, for it’s 
all true. I’m real, that is I’m a part of the great 
reality that habit has disturbed. You can’t turn 
my will or take it, for it’s a city of utter faith; 
your own must turn if we’re ever to join hands. 
I’m a maze, Hadden, and there’s only one way by 
which you can get out at the point you want. 
You call it the looking-glass theory; you don’t like 
it; you haven’t proved it times and times over as 
I have; but, couldn’t you trust me? Wise men 
have been led by children before now. It’s a 
fever-dream, I tell you, the life you try to live 
with those poor people in there; couldn’t you agree 
to let it go ? They strive and strive, and you know 
in your heart of hearts that they end in nothing, 
that when trouble comes they fall to pieces; they 
shriek for us or else for anaesthetics. You’ll have 


“Almost Thou Persuadest Me” 221 

to come my way in the end. Why can’t you take 
it while you’ve still something to give in exchange 
for immortality? You’re not mean, you’re not a 
coward, and you’ve put on hand on the plow 
more than once. Are you going back? ” 

“ I — I scarcely know. I feel inclined to say 
with Agrippa, ‘ almost thou persuadest me to be a 
Christian.’ ” 

She cried out in a rapture and laid hands on 
him again. 

“ I knew it. You’ve seen the fairy, and out of 
the fairy comes the angel, and out of the angel 
comes slowly, slowly, the consciousness of God, 
the craving for God.” 

‘‘ I’m afraid you go too fast. I said ‘ almost,’ 
Sibyl, and I shouldn’t like to decide how much of 
this qualified surrender was due to your person- 
ality. Remember, please, that you’re a beautiful 
young woman in a most becoming frame, and 
beauty, mere physical beauty, is a drug I’ve been 
taking in pretty stiff doses of late. You shall tie 
your handkerchief over my eyes, but remember 


222 


The Sinking Ship 


that it is your handkerchief and responsibility into 
the bargain. I’ll vouch for nothing in the way of 
consequences. I’ve been turned round so many 
times by so many people during the last weeks that 
I’ve but a vague notion as to where I stand, or if I 
stand at all. You conquer to this extent. I com- 
mit myself to you; you commit me to the mercy 
of the unknown spirit of this balcony, and our 
ultimate relation to one another lies on the knees 
of a very strange and indefinite God. The situa- 
tion stands over. I’ve certainly not forced my 
way, and you haven’t established yours. As to 
detail, I take it I’m to go on writing round the lady 
of my late idolatry; I’m to lunch with her, to talk 
to her as improvingly as may be ; but what are we 
to talk about? She wouldn’t stand this, you 
know.” 

‘‘ Why not? You’ve stood it.” 

‘‘ Yes, because you exert an influence over me.” 

And you exert a much bigger influence over 
her.” 

Y — yes,” he agreed doubtfully; '‘but it isn’t 


Almost Thou Persuadest Me ” 223 

the same kind; and there’s her counter-influence 
over me to consider. She treats me to Tokay, 
Sibyl, and cigarettes of a peculiar flavor, and 
tea-gowns that change color as you look at them, 
and ideas that do very much the same; there’s an 
aroma, too, in her sanctum that affects the senses 
in a dangerous fashion. I doubt if it will allow 
me to keep to the point, to your point, for long 
at a time. There are others, you know, you 
most adorable fanatic, and one of them is getting 
its claws into me now. Give me your hand again. 
There, I’ve taken it. How soft it is ; how like the 
usual pliant, female hand! Who’d think there 
was so much steel behind the velvet? Sibyl, 
Sibyl, have you ever thought of the parts you 
haven’t played, the parts for which you’re so per- 
fectly designed — wife and mother? I’m not ar- 
bitrary; I’d come a good half-way and more to 
meet those fine but rather fantastic ideas of yours. 
Compromise, Sibyl ; come and build a house with 
me, such a house as the century has never seen. 
We could, we must, we will ! ” The whisper, tense 


224 "The Sinking Ship 

with passion, seemed to echo on the silence. Her 
face was averted, inscrutable; sideways she looked 
into the darkness, and the latch of the window 
rattled. 

“ They're coming ! " he said with desperation. 
'' Give me an answer." 

No." He let the limp hand fall. He spoke 
with quite a creditable air of equanimity. 

‘‘ It's your hour, my dear, and from an artistic 
point of view you're right not to spoil it. Still, 1 
can't disassociate my mind from an ugly mem- 
ory." He threw a glance over his shoulder, but 
the hand upon the window seemed to wait his 
pleasure. ‘‘ The memory of a lion-tamer who 
brought his beasts to what appeared the perfec- 
tion of docility and was eaten up at one unfor- 
tunate moment when caution was napping. I’m 
afraid you're blissfully ignorant of the ingredients 
that go to the nature of the lion. I should be 
sorry to eat anybody up, and more sorry still to 
be eaten up myself; but I warn you there's a fair 
chance of one of these accidents happening; I 


“ Almost Thou Persuadest Me ” 225 

warn you that it’s fire we’re going to tamper 
with.” 

“ And I tell you again that fire and water and 
all the elements are only dangerous to the human 
will, the will that says, I want this, I choose that, 
I claim the other. Let her come near, the nearer 
the better.” 

She’s coming now,” he broke in resignedly. 
‘‘ Talk of preaching to the wild birds, it was 
child’s play to the task you set me.” He rose, 
for Vanda herself was at his elbow, looking from 
him to his companion with observant eyes. 

“ You naughty children,” she exclaimed, in her 
most purring note. What are you doing here 
in this nasty, draughty place ? Rodney, tell me.” 
She turned to the man behind — her neighbor at 
the supper-table. Is there mischief in the air or 
only a surfeit of oxygen? ” 

I’ve so little acquaintance with both com- 
modities that I hesitate to offer an opinion.” 

Nonsense,” she laughed, but with an under- 
current of insistence; ''what you don’t know 


226 The Sinking Ship 

about mischief isn’t worth knowing. Exert your- 
self, if you please; explain this atmosphere, for 
it’s beyond me.” 

Exactly,” he replied, removing the tip of his 
cigar with deliberation; “ it’s beyond us, my dear 
friend. We should have come out five minutes 
sooner if we meant to cope with it. Whatever it 
may or may not signify, it’s now too thoroughly 
established for interference. In my profession 
the first lesson we learn is the art of sparing our 
faculties unnecessary labor. Mr. Renshaw, can 
you oblige me with a light ? ” 

Hadden did more; he held the match to the 
gentleman’s cigar. It threw a glow over the 
handsome, cynical face, over the discreetly low- 
ered eyelids, behind which the young man could 
not but suspect laughter and contempt. Vanda 
was smiling too when he turned to take a rather 
abrupt leave of her. 

‘‘ Sleep well,” she said, “ in your room under 
the stars. Dream for the last time that you’re 
still a nobody. In another eight hours your name 


Almost Thou Persuadest Me ” 227 

will be on every tongue; you’ll tap on every fash- 
ionable door in London and go in with the tea 
and the hot water. This is fame, Hadden, and 
it isn’t a dead-sea fruit by any means. Some 
folks will tell you that it is, but be very sure they 
haven’t tasted it; the grapes were sour because 
they hung too high.” 


CHAPTER Xin 


DAY-DREAMING AND DIVORCE 

Vanda lay in her hammock in the garden of 
her cottage on the Thames. It was Sunday, the 
day following the new production, and content, as 
near supreme as any she could conceive of, lapped 
her senses in luxury. The thermometer regis- 
tered eighty-one in the shade, but it was a royal 
shade ; the branches of the giant sycamore spread, 
fan-like, between her and the sun; the river at 
her feet kept up a ceaseless and a soothing mur- 
mur; at intervals a light wind rustled across the 
garden like a perfumed lady in a silken gown. 
She could have slept, but she played with the no- 
tion, unwilling to let go of this sweet conscious- 
ness that filled her veins. 

All things took gracious color under the dual 

influences of memory and expectation, and look 
228 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 229 

where she might it was to see a glorified image 
of herself. Even the boat moored on the far side 
of the water, some fifty yards down stream, failed 
to suggest enmity. That white figure of a girl 
that it contained harmonized, for once, with her 
dreams and aims. Had she not flung, like the 
boy-champion, her all into the stock-pot of an- 
other’s welfare? A thrill of gratitude stirred 
gave birth to feeble progeny; some day (the date 
was left pleasantly vague), but some day she, 
Vanda, would build for these two a cabin at her 
gate. Dependents on her bounty, joint-devotees 
at her shrine, it might be possible, desirable even, 
to cement what she complacently called their ex- 
uberant interest in herself and their tempered in- 
terest in one another into a mold matrimonial. 
Her mind, surfeited with complacency, could pro- 
pound a policy of “ so far and no farther ” with 
but little difficulty. 

In spite, however, of her efforts to keep a ma- 
terial hold upon sensation, the garden began to 
lose its definite lines, and she was borne, by slow 


230 The Sinking Ship 

and luxurious degrees, down and back into that 
other fabled garden where the first woman reigned 
alone. Member by member her form was re- 
molded to the pattern of its lost perfection; white 
and strong, wrapped only in the fluttering mantle 
of her hair, she stood at gaze, and, once again, 
her eye, turn whither it would, could find no trace 
of dissolution and decay. A silver veil, fine as 
the web of a spider, seemed to envelop land and 
sky, softening their crudities of color, and the 
green earth; there was dew on the petal of each 
flower; there was pulsing life in the brown earth 
under her feet; in the air, in the water and in her 
person the spirits of health and gaiety played at 
will, linking the animate in nature to the in- 
animate, knitting the strands of harmony that the 
age of civilization had so wantonly sundered. 
The lamb, a white fleck of innocence, lay down 
with the wolf; in the blue ether rocked the eagle 
and the dove in mutual bliss; in the swelling heart 
desire labored towards the apex of the great 
mountain of ecstacy; but, as in some haunted 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 231 

house, a deed of evil is repeated or reflected, so 
here, the reopening gate of Paradise exposed the 
outline of a flaming sword. Once more a single 
human will was set face to face with temptation; 
once more the universe was offered to war and the 
long humors of war, to folly and fiction, to false 
gods and prophets, to wickedness in high places 
and low; and once more that will succumbed; 
there was a roar as of many waters, the roar of 
outraged millions seeming to leap in a frenzy of 
reproach on the betrayer, and with a shriek of 
her own the dreamer woke and stretched implor- 
ing hands towards the very rock on which her 
divinity had been wrecked, towards the false con- 
ditions of her century and her choice. Oh, the 
relief to inhale the scent of stocks, to hear a bee 
scold from the meshes of the hammock, in which 
his sticky wings had been prisoned; oh, the 
blessed relief of finding, not a dozen yards away, 
the calm, handsome face of a companion in de- 
lusion. 

‘‘Adrian, you're good to look at. Did I call 


232 The Sinking Ship 

out ? It was a nightmare — well, a daymare. 
Drive it away ! Talk, talk fast ! talk of the world, 
the good, sound world we live in. That’s a Sun- 
day paper under your arm. Tell me we struck 
oil last night.” 

Oil ! ” he said, with reassuring gaiety. “ The 
widow’s cruse isn’t in it.” 

“ Read, read ! ” But he paused to settle him- 
self into the wicker chair beside her, to dispose a 
cushion behind his head. 

“ All in good time, you most excitable of 
women. I’ll skip the usual panegyrics and start 
with the feather that very nearly knocked me 
down.” 

“ What do you mean? ” 

‘‘ That my battle with your respected mother 
was not fought in vain.” 

‘‘ What do you mean ? ” she said again, the 
terror creeping back into her face and voice. 

“ ‘ Miss Sibyl Conquest,’ ” he read aloud, by 
way of answer, “ ‘ makes her debut in Mr. Ren- 
shaw’s play, and, though she has been provided 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 233 

with the flimsiest of parts, she contrives to make 
a mark in it. Were it the ordinary mark of the 
ordinary, pretty, little aspirant to public favor, 
we should dispose of it in the usual manner, with 
a gracious word or two of encouragement; but it 
was, to our thinking, a very far from common 
mark; it was, in fact, so uncommon as to stand 
outside the range of general criticism. Mr. Ren- 
shaw has aimed high, but, if our perceptions be 
not grossly at fault, Miss Conquest has aimed yet 
higher. Space does not permit us to define very 
exactly the nature of her influence, and we con- 
tent ourselves for the present with the following 
simile. The ship that our new dramatist pre- 
sented with such consummate skill and rescued 
with so much subtlety and eloquence, seemed, at 
the moment of deliverance, to belch forth a fleet of 
little boats, and it is with the fortune of these 
same little boats that public interest will, ere long, 
be involved.' There, vhat do you say to that ? " 
“ I say it's written by a person of an imagina- 


tive turn of mind." 


234 "The Sinking Ship 

It’s written by an outsider,” he remarked in 
apparent disregard of her growing agitation. 

He’s been turned on, Lawson tells me, owing 
to the illness of their stock critic, and he’s a crank, 
of course, but — his crankiness may be profitable.” 

‘‘ You think,” she said with ominous calm, 
‘‘ that Sibyl is all that ? ” 

“ It pays me to think it. It always pays to 
have a bulwark behind one’s experiments. You, 
my dear, who take such pleasure in looking ahead, 
ought to appreciate the fellow’s fancy notion even 
more than I’m disposed to do.” 

“ You mean, Adrian, that the play was only a 
succh foil; that it will run a season, and that then 
— then we must look to Sibyl for protection ? ” 

He tipped his straw hat sideways, evincing a 
little discomfort ; he looked out under the brim of 
it towards the boat, half hidden by the drooping 
branches of a willow-tree. 

“ It’s difficult quite to gauge the value of even 
a most successful production. The fireworks 
went off all right; but fireworks are apt to pall 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 235 

after a time, and very possibly our public will de- 
mand a new species of tonic, something a trifle 
less heady/’ 

‘‘ I see.” She spoke with treacherous amiabil- 
ity of accent. “ But suppose you hand me down 
in response to this demand, are you quite sure 
Sibyl is ready to fill my place? ” 

My dear, there’s no question of handing down 
and up. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of that 
kid.” 

“ The outsider doesn’t regard her as a kid.” 

So much the better,” he insisted. Person- 
ally I see no more in her than a pretty and demure 
piece of goods, but I’m not such a fool as to say 
so in face of this counter-suggestion, in which 
there’s money, or the promise of money. She 
must be educated, taught her value; that young 
man must be persuaded to write round her a bit. 
I’ll talk to them both to-day. Where is he, by- 
the-bye? Thought he spoke of running down.” 

“ He did, but he spoke of a tramp through the 
country first. He’ll turn up later — at tea-time 


236 The Sinking Ship 

most probably. Still, you can tackle Sibyl. 
She’s over there in the boat, dreaming, maybe, of 
worlds to conquer. Take her down the river for 
the day. I want to be alone. No, I’m not jeal- 
ous — at least not to the extent that you suppose. 
I shan’t interfere with Sibyl’s education, or your 
advice to Hadden; but there’s something — one 
question — ^before you go.” 

‘‘Yes? ” he queried idly. 

“ I’ve tried to put it more than once, Adrian, 
and I haven’t dared. You’ll be certain to evade 
it now; you’ll say it’s too hot to find the answer. 
But I’ve waited twenty years.” 

“ Then an extra twenty-four hours can’t sig- 
nify. Wait on till the thermometer goes down.” 

“ No. It was here, by this river, that you 
spoke to me. There was this same monotonous 
lap of the water; and I thought then that it 
seemed a mockery of your eloquence, for you 
were eloquent, Adrian. Strange and lovely 
spirits rose under the magic of your words. Tell 
me, tell me, that you cared, that they came from 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 237 

your heart, that you had a heart in those far-away 
days. No, don’t smile at me, don’t stroke me, 
don’t put me off with pleasant, ambiguous 
phrases ; tell me the truth, for in my mind to-day 
there’s a hideous doubt, the shadow of a hideous 
wrong. I’m not talking of the present. I’m talk- 
ing of the past, of that night when you whispered 
the momentous question, and I wavered and 
looked away, and thought of my two wooers, and 
took them both, and was true to them, in spite of 
all tradition tells of the impossible. Did you love 
the girl, or did you want the rising actress? 
That’s the question, the tormenting question. I’ve 
never dared to put before. What did you give 
me, Adrian, in exchange for my great love ? ” 

“ I gave you all I had to give, Vanda.” He 
spoke with rare gravity, and she shivered, hiding 
her face an instant in her long, trembling hands. 

Oh,” she said faintly, here’s the truth at 
last. A ring, only a ring. No wonder the house 
rocks, no wonder the rain comes in. It’s the 
truth, but it isn’t the whole truth, and now I must 


238 The Sinking Ship 

have the rest. See, Fm quite calm ; I won’t make 
a scene; where would be the use? You don’t ac- 
cept scenes or anything else that’s expensive to 
comfort. Tell me the story, the story of your 
death. You must have been very young; you 
were scarcely thirty when you came to me with 
that mock tale of devotion. Tell me her name; it 
isn’t much to ask in exchange for all my sweet 
delusions.” 

‘‘ Her name,” he said, still with that unfamiliar 
air of gravity. “ She had so many, Vanda. Fll 
find one or two if you insist.” 

“ Then you own that once you were alive.” 

“ I was very much alive.” 

“ Stage stock,” she prompted, for he seemed to 
sink into a melancholy reverie. “ You’ve told 
me of your mother, an inflammation imprisoned 
in a Rubens frame, out of which she made much 
capital; your father was an opera singer, died in 
the very act of conducting Faust to the lower 
regions. I should have thought a boy, a healthy, 
handsome, English boy, would have rebelled at 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 239 

the lines in which his lot had fallen, would have 
broken out into new and sounder country/' 

‘‘ I did rebel, but circumstances were a bit too 
strong. I was thrown to — would it be ultra- 
theatrical to say the lions? when I was too young 
to discriminate between milk-teeth and the 
dangerous molar. I was a child when I was first 
set to play boy-lover to all sorts and conditions 
of women. At sixteen or thereabouts I passed 
from the credulous, idolatrous state to the chival- 
rous. I recognized a call for protection behind 
the insinuating plaint of my heroine. I warred 
for a period against the brutality of my own sex 
on behalf of the martyr whose blood cried out so 
very tunefully for vengeance. Unlimited must 
have been the amusement that this ingenious at- 
titude provoked. I thought it fine and suitable 
that the ring of steel should encircle every head 
of a certain shape and an uncertain age, and only 
when my confidence had been imposed upon times 
innumerable and ways damnable, did the optimism 
drop a peg or two. Only under the continual 


240 


The Sinking Ship 


pressure of coquetry, intrigue and treachery did I 
yield up the ghost of that condition you still seem 
disposed to christen life. Her name? Dear 
friend,” he went on with rare excitement, “ she 
was hydra-headed; she was a Bohemian, which 
signified she was free to eat her cake and claim 
it; she was a child, which signified she might 
handle pitch and prate of undefilement; she was a 
Catholic, which signified she could afford to in- 
dulge in expensive crimes. Oh, call me an un- 
fortunate if you like, but I tell you, Vanda, that I 
had no choice; I was compelled to live on their 
husks or starve; there was no bread within reach. 
A dead man? yes; but I didn’t die at my own 
hands.” 

‘‘ There was fame,” she whispered, but he 
laughed mirthlessly. 

“ That platitude ! that ladder shooting up into 
the clouds! I wonder how often I scaled it, and 
how often I came down to start again, and yet 
again, always with less luggage, until every 
vestige of my faith had been sacrificed, and, 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 241 

light as the proverbial feather, I stood on the 
summit of Olympus and took cool stock of my 
fellow-adventurers. Good Lord, what a com- 
pany ! — city promoters, effete musicians, perform- 
ing apes. What a tussle, for what an end ! There 
wasn’t even the satisfaction of feeling one had 
fought a good fight. It was a bad fight, a mean 
fight, a sniffling, hit-below-the-belt fight, and one 
sat on top panting from the demoralizing effects 
of it. The gates of what the folks downstairs 
had chosen to call success had been guarded, not 
by the lion, indicative of valour, but by an array of 
dogs, too small for steel, too lithe for avoidance. 
We were marked, one and all, with their poison- 
ous fangs.” 

There was one bite,” she put in fiercely, 
‘'more virulent than the rest; don’t tell me there 
wasn’t, for I shouldn’t believe you. Tell me her 
name.” 

Again he laughed with increase of bitter irony. 

“ It’s unpronounceable, for she’s been a Rus- 
sian princess these twenty years and more. We 


242 


The Sinking Ship 


called her Una in those days. She said it built for 
her the forest of a liberty she’d never known, and 
doubtless it did, my Vanda, for the hour. Shall 
I go on ? Shall I tell you of that hour ? It sticks 
in my memory like a bone in a man’s throat, 
stopping his enjoyment of his natural food, and 
not quite big enough to set his poor tormented 
spirit free from his log of a body. Shall I paint 
it for you as it looked on that French coast in 
May?” 

“No, no. It wasn’t my hour; I’ve had no 
hour. Oh, the folly, the waste, of trying to hold 
a stream of water between one’s hands, of tread- 
ing cautiously lest one should hurt a flower that 
was never at one’s feet; but there. I’ll be calm. I 
know the worst; I think I’ve always known it. 
Between us there is still one bond of union— our 
mercenary advantage; there’s that to shelter and 
protect. Each in our own way we can work for 
comfort and success. Go and talk to Sibyl; fire 
her into ambition if you can, and I’ll talk to the 
boy; I’ll keep his neck in the collar of our interest. 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 243 

If I’m a widow, I’ll be a merry widow. That’s 
logic, isn’t it, after your own heart? So you 
don’t love me; you never did love me, and I’m 
free to serve the other master only. Straighten 
my cushions, there’s a dear. You look yourself 
again, only just a bit ashamed of your candor. 
Lydie’s out, the saints be thanked, in the Gen- 
eral’s motor. They wanted to pack me into the 
tonneau, and I nearly said ‘ yes,’ but the chauffeur 
wasn’t tempting enough. I’m going to lie here 
and reconcile my pride to the idea of a stage rival. 
I shall have to think too of a plan by which to 
turn the tap of our new friend’s genius on to 
her. At present, you know, I block his view 
entirely.” 

You’re sure? ” he said thoughtfully, and she 
lowered her eyelids lest the sudden flash of the 
eyes beneath should tell too much of the inten- 
tions surging into her busy mind. 

‘'You doubt, dear Adrian?” 

“Last night he followed her to the balcony. 
For quite a time ” he stopped, some instinct 


244 The Sinking Ship 

warning him of her secret antagonism, but she 
hastened to allay suspicion. 

You’re quite right. He has begun to notice 
her, though only, I fear, as my daughter. Still, 
there’s an opening for influence. I’ll talk to him, 
find out how far his curiosity goes, how far it 
can be induced to go.” 

He lingered for a few minutes, arranging her 
cushions as desired, talking of trifles; but as he 
moved away with all too obvious alacrity towards 
the river bank, she watched him with an ex- 
pression that, had he turned, must have enlight- 
ened him, in disagreeable fashion, as to the value 
of her boast of equanimity. She seemed the very 
embodiment of prisoned passion; her face and 
form were dense with it, and her narrowed eyes 
gleamed with the ferocity of a trapped wolf, 
though it was lurid intention rather than despair 
that dominated her expression. 

As she watched the tall, graceful figure saunter 
away, as she listened to his hail of the girl in the 
boat, listened to the chiming of the two voices^ 


Day-Dreaming and Divorce 245 

and presently to the dip of the oars as the pair 
made their way down-stream, she was at work 
tracing her new line of battle, for the little cabin 
at her gate was in fragments. Her generosity 
was in like condition, and, divorced thus brutally 
from one lover of her youth, every faculty in her 
surged to the standard of the other. She had 
lost her husband — had, indeed, never possessed 
him; but her art, though threatened, still re- 
mained, and a smile, cruel and baneful, flickered 
across her face as she thought of her victim given 
into her desperate hands at the seductive hour of 
eventide, for she was optimist enough to see in 
fate the handmaid of the resolute. Adrian could 
be trusted not to undertake the row up-steam 
until the sun should be well behind the row of 
willows lining the river-bank. Lydie could be 
trusted to allow the moon to participate in her 
outing, and the boy himself could surely be 
trusted to shed much, if not all, his suspicion of 
her in such atmosphere as this. He would be 
tired, moreover, with his long and solitary tramp; 


246 The Sinking Ship 

weary, thirsty, he would drop into the chair 
Adrian had vacated, would look to her for the 
filling of his empty cup, and carefully, callously, 
as Lucretia of Italian fame, she sought and mixed 
the herbs best calculated to poison and inflame. 
This was no longer a game with an advantage in 
tow on which she was about to embark, it was 
the last throw of the dice, and life — all the life 
she knew — as yet hung on the hazard of it. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE BELL ACROSS THE RIVER 

And fate seemed disposed to play into her 
hands. He came at eventide, his clothes bespat- 
tered with mud, his elasticity both of physique 
and temperament plainly impaired. Tactfully she 
plied him with tea and light converse. She had 
discarded her place in the hammock and taken 
a seat opposite his own. Behind her a silver 
sickle of a moon showed pale against the dull blue 
of the heavens. The moist earth exhaled an aro- 
matic odor; there was bird-chatter of a dilatory 
kind in the bushes that encircled their retreat. 

And as she talked in perfect tune with her sur- 
roundings she could almost see his favorite 
tendencies straggling back to their accustomed 
haunts. Instinctively she guessed the extent, 

though not the precise nature, of his defection, 
247 


248 The Sinking Ship 

and her resolution, like a snake in the thick 
jungle-grass of her secretive personality, lay 
watching its prey, biding its time, perfecting the 
design of its coming assault. 

How young he was ; how transparent in spite of 
all his affectations ! With what avidity he looked 
to her for refreshment, for escape from the dark 
tangle of the thoughts that had pursued him like 
furies ever since the production of the play. The 
shadows deepened, and the moon took on a cor- 
responding degree of brilliancy. Hand in hand 
(like a pair of lovers) his sympathy and her 
imagination stole out into the fairy night. 
Slowly, deftly, she selected her gossamer threads; 
slowly, deftly, she drew him up with them out of 
that slough of harsh intro- and r^/ro-spection. 
Growing ever surer of her own strength, ever 
more contemptuous of her rival’s, she found it 
possible and highly diverting to introduce the 
very weaknesses that had undermined his fealty, 
and to make them pirouette before him, while she 
explained, with the volubility of a practised show- 


The Bell Across the River 249 

man, why and how they contrived to stand clear 
of censure. She told him of Janus, whose double 
face sets criticism at defiance; of human frailty, 
the grub, resolving into the jeweled butterfly, ex- 
perience. She told of wrecks, of rescue, of 
broken machinery, and the rapture behind the art 
of reconstruction; and as her voice began to thrill 
and throb he ceased to struggle, his features re- 
laxed, his limbs relaxed, his responses softened, 
till they were no longer walls of greater or less 
magnitude to be leveled by her eloquent per- 
sistence, till his opposition was reduced to nothing 
sounder than an occasional gibe, which she elected 
to swallow with an absent air of amiability. 

I pride myself,” she told him, “ on my tol- 
erance. I think there are but two fatalities in my 
schedule of existence — standing still and looking 
hack. So it’s no use to try and force regret 
down my throat; if I swallowed the sensation I 
couldn’t digest it. Listen to that bell beating the 
passive air, striving to beat us all into one pat- 
tern, striving to drive us all in one direction.” 


2^0 The Sinking Ship 

‘‘ Into a village church/^ he murmured, aware 
that this bell of her illustration was hurrying him 
yet further into the circle of her influence. “ I 
certainly can't see you there. In a cathedral? 
Yes, upon occasion. You'd want your religion 
highly colored; you’d want incense, and plenty of 
hothouse flowers." 

‘‘ No,” she returned dispassionately. “ No, 
yo-u're wrong there; you know a gr^at deal of me, 
but you don't know all; how should you, when so 
much is still a mystery to myself? I'm no lover 
of ceremony, though I know how to employ it. 
I’m no lover of flowers either; they’re exchanged 
too carelessly, they fade too quickly; but I love 
what they stand for — force without gross sub- 
stance. They express and dissolve and express 
again. There's continuity without monotony 
and without the curse of egoism. Out of the 
dead comes the living; out of corruption glamor. 
We trample on them, and, under our feet, dis- 
dainful of our feet, they perform the feat of resur- 
rection." 


The Bell Across the River 251 

A white moth fluttered round her head; the 
leaves of the sycamore began to rustle. Some- 
thing he thought, with a creep of the flesh, half 
fearful, half ecstatic, was stirring, trying to find a 
shape in which to pass the last sentry of his inde- 
pendence. In his veins the blood that had been 
languid for so many hours was running freely, 
and, like a boat on the flood, his old craving, 
never fully analyzed, never fully acknowledged, 
was moving swiftly towards some desirable and 
familiar landing-stage. He thought again of Si- 
byl’s creed; he heard it sounded by those bells 
across the river, and now it was a tale of hurry- 
ing and worrying pursuit ; it was losing its purity 
of outline; it was swelling, breaking, spending its 
significance in idle clamor. 

The white moth had vanished, but another 
shape as white and as ghostly floated towards 
him; her hand, with its long, tapering fingers, 
hovered above his own, dallying, it would seem, 
with the joys of capture, for, when she touched 
him, he knew that a last frail defense would go 


252 The Sinking Ship 

down; the old gods would come into view again 
bringing their gifts with them. In the darkness 
he saw light, decoration, the excited and exciting 
faces of last night’s public; he felt on his hot 
forehead the impress of cool, green leaves — the 
leaves of the laurel — and smiling, expectant, he 
leant forward; but, as he moved, he became con- 
scious of interruption; the bell had changed its 
tune; that delirious pursuit had ceased; a single 
note of iron, peremptory and strong, emblem of 
forces disciplined to act in concert and with re- 
straint, gave to his imagination a new impetus; 
his muscles stiffened; but, quick as he was to 
recognize and accept this intangible intrusion, she 
was yet quicker to turn it to account. 

“ Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I promise ? ” she ex- 
claimed in a husky whisper, and her hand flew to 
her own breast. “ We deal with the unwritten 
laws. That was a voice, Hadden, out of the 
darkness. Somebody interfered ; somebody thinks 
we’re out of the course. We must stop, we must 
turn; we must try another way. Oh, say you 


The Bell Across the River 253 

heard it; say you understood. I’ve played with 
the fire so often by myself, but with a friend 
never.” 

She had broken the back of his recoil undoubt- 
edly, but a certain degree of stiffness remained 
in his bearing, and she deemed it advisable to try 
other tactics. She decided to bewilder him as 
Puck bewilders the traveler by calling from vari- 
ous points of the compass at once. She fell back 
upon her cushions with a pettish movement. 

“Hush! That’s my nightingale; he begins 
every Sunday evening at this time. I rather 
think he’s a big official of the Underworld. They 
give him such a hearing. He never gets shouted 
down either by the Opposition. Listen to such 
adorable nonsense, nonsense in which, if one 
only took the trouble, one could find a secret, the 
secret of the lost color, or the lost word, or the 
lost spirit of peace,” she added, and gave him 
inadvertently a handle for one at least of his 
doubts. 

“You fidget so,” he said irritably; “you dab- 


254 Sinking Ship 

ble in so many impressions that you never get 
down to the bed-rock of a single one of them.’^ 

She made no reply. With her arms behind 
her head she stared up into the night very much 
as Sibyl had done, and for the first time he recog- 
nized a layer of the ridiculous in his plot with the 
young girl. This beautiful and absent creature 
asked neither pity nor championship ; her eye was 
assuredly not on him, but far above his head, and 
his sense of insufficiency bustled up, like an im- 
potent policeman, to bluster where it was power- 
less to control. 

“ You tell and you promise from morning to 
night, but you never substantiate. You’re a mu- 
seum packed with interesting curios; there’s a 
specimen of everything that flies or swims or 
crawls, but I begin to doubt if any specimen has 
life in it. I begin to wonder if there is in you a 
nerve really susceptible to poignant emotion, or 
whether every particle is so highly charged that 
education defeats its own purpose, Vanda, and 
you represent a dead level.” 


The Bell Across the River 255 

A really susceptible nerve/^ she repeated 
softly, and brought her eyes down to him. 
‘‘Shall I tell? Must I tell? Tve let such an 
army of cats out of my bag already for your 
benefit, and this is such a vulgar, ugly beast, cer- 
tain to spoil the picture — all the pictures of my 
childhood, of my early womanhood, that Fve 
painted for you in such bright colors. Have you 
forgotten them ? 

“ No. You were a fairy and a devil; you were 
a battlefield for all the virtues and the vices. 
Was there actually a quality missing? ” 

“ Yes, the link Adrian and I didn’t want you 
to find. I wanted to be above you and below 
you; never beside you, never human, circum- 
scribed, domestic. There — it’s out. You’re 
thinking of my gibes; but don’t you know that 
we gibe loudest at the foes we fear the most? I 
chose to tell you half the story of my construction 
— the impressive half; it’s not an uncommon fail- 
ing with raconteurs; but I can’t deceive you be- 
yond a certain point. Sooner or later you’d have 


256 The Sinking Ship 

forced me to own up. Yes, I’m domestic — listen 
again. I told you of the fairy and her little sil- 
ver shoe, but I didn’t tell you that she used to 
rock a cradle with it when nobody was looking, 
and what’s worse, she does it still. Give me a 
dark room,” she went on, the apology in her voice 
decreasing, “ give me an idle hour, and I fly to the 
indulgence of that ingrained habit as an opium 
victim to his beloved poison. I strike a match 
and a tiny kitchen comes into view ; I set it to the 
fagots on the hearth and the smoke begins to 
curl, the red light plays over the plaster walls, 
and the cheap prints emerge one by one. You’ve 
known them all — there’s Red Riding-hood staring 
out in terror of the wolf, there’s a red-coated 
squire cutting a monster plum-pudding for a row 
of yellow-haired children, and there’s a corona- 
tion; it’s a low room, and there’s a wooden table 
in the middle ; and next I lay my cloth and set the 
coarse plates and knives, and the hunk of cheese, 
and the pat of butter, and then I cut thick slices 
from an imaginary piece of bacon and kneel down 


The Bell Across the River 257 

before the glowing fire and toast and dream with 
one eye on the door and one ear bent to catch the 
ponderous footfall of the man who never comes. 
No, he never comes, for I’m just sane enough to 
stop him in the doorway. And now do you 
despise? or is the old French adage right, tout 
comprendre, my friend, c’est tout pardonnerf ” 
Did he understand? Did he pardon? Did 
this unexpected confession really provide what it 
purposed to provide — a rallying ground for his 
declaration of independence? Helplessly he 
looked into her face, from which the pride had 
faded; into her strange eyes, wet with tears she 
was too clever to let fall. Wildly he groped for 
slipping memories, for the thought of Sibyl, but 
it refused to take clear shape. She was growing 
smaller and always smaller, like the figure of the 
girl we leave behind us when a great liner takes 
us out to sea, until there was no more of her than 
the flutter of a handkerchief — no, the flutter 
rather of those ghostly wings, for the moth was 
back again. And again the spirit of a dominat- 


258 


The Sinking Ship 


ing resolution seemed to hunt and to find a human 
form; again the white hand swayed towards him, 
and again paralysis settled upon his faculties; the 
old longing had him in thrall, the longing to play 
knight-errant, after a fashion of his own, with 
this woman, maimed and yet winged, this woman 
whose power and limit hung in so curiously level 
a balance ; and once more, at the psychological mo- 
ment, intervention came, for the church bell 
ceased to vibrate, the garden, the river, the fields 
beyond, lay in a deathly stillness, waiting, so it 
seemed to his fancy, for some conclusion, some 
verdict which it lay with him to find, a verdict 
which she and her audacious nature would be 
compelled to obey. He found it and stared 
at it before he gave it utterance, for it was 
distasteful. 

“ I don’t love you,” he announced in an un- 
steady voice, “ I don’t love you or approve you ; 
but you’re Scheherazade, teller of a thousand 
tales, and — and I can’t put you to death till I’ve 
heard the lot. I don’t say your influence is evil; 


The Bell Across the River 259 

I don’t know how far it’s conscious ; I only know 
that my submission to it is evil, or at least a rot- 
ten choice. This isn’t a very flattering way of 
renewing my vows of allegiance, but you’ve got 
your remedy, you can always turn me off. You 
understand, don’t you, the nature of the insult I 
offer? I didn’t mean to offer it; it was forced 
on me by what you called just now a voice out of 
the darkness — ^by that unseen somebody with 
whom you claim to be on terms. He jerked the 
string again, and suddenly I saw you as the 
brilliant woman of experience and myself as the 
usual young idiot in the toils, only with this com- 
pensating sop to vanity. I was aware of the 
toils.” 

Let me think,” she murmured without a 
vestige of chagrin, “ let me think. You’re 
splendidly candid, and you’ve told me fairly all 
you know to tell; but, there’s something still be- 
hind. I’ve bits of the wonderful puzzle that 
you’ve given me at different times. I’ve left them 
about. I must find them and fit them together. 


26o The Sinking Ship 

This isn’t the first time you’ve turned on me and 
treated me to anger and sarcasm. There was the 
rehearsal — one of the early rehearsals. I called 
you and you didn’t hear; you were looking an- 
other way — at a young girl — at my Sibyl. And 
there was last night. Oh, we’ll get it presently, 
the solution that we want. You were sullen and 
fearful, you stood in the wings and scowled at 
me, and now we’re coming on to the balcony — to 
atmosphere that Rodney said it was too late to 
define. Something happened there, but it wasn’t 
quite the usual something that a man and a maid 
and a moon might be expected to produce; it 
wasn’t the usual something,” she repeated with a 
suggestive influx of mock anxiety; “it couldn’t 
be, for you’re not the usual man, nothing shall 
induce me to believe you’re that.” She leaned 
forward with an effective air of rising terror. 
“ You play with me, but it’s because you know me 
armed. You wouldn’t, you couldn’t be so cruel 
as to play with her, with that ignorant, simple 
child. And yet a suspicion is forming, growing 


The Bell Across the River 261 


bigger, closing in on me, Hadden. Hadden, what 
have you done to her? ” 

She’s neither ignorant nor simple,” he said, 
watching her and her feigned excitement closely. 
I’ve done nothing to her; I haven’t the power.” 
“ Then what has she done to you? ” 

‘‘ Troubled the water,” he answered moodily, 
and I begin to think the cruelty was on her side, 
seeing that I’m an impotent man, unable to take 
advantage of what she calls the miracle. Yes, 
she’s troubled the water, as you once said I 
troubled it for you.” 


CHAPTER XV 


A PROPHET OF BAAL 

For some moments retort was out of the ques- 
tion; it was all she could do to conceal from him, 
under the veil of silence, her consternation. Mo- 
tionless, almost breathless, she sat awaiting the 
saving idea that had, as yet, never failed her in 
the hour of danger. Adrian's defection had bit- 
ten deep, deeper than she had quite realized. 
Anger and determination shielded the wound; 
but was this last defender of her cause about to 
tear it open? 

The pressman had already turned informer. In 
a few hours the general public would be making 
capital out of his revelation. She was indeed the 
animal in a corner, and desperately she searched 
her armory for a weapon strong enough to sub- 
due this vacillating mind. 

262 


A Prophet of Baal 


263 

He was looking down, grinding the heel of his 
boot into the grass. It was evident he meant to 
leave the attack to her. 

Oh, these castles in the air ! ” she began at 
length, more it would seem to herself than to her 
companion. “ Oh, these gorgeous and impossible 
castles that we erect to the honor and the glory, 
and, alas, the intoxication of our teens! 

‘‘ You’re out of it again, Mrs. Vanda.” His 
eye, his note, were alike defiant. She has no 
use for castles. It’s a temple that she builds, on 
nothing more or less than an entire abdication of 
the will, and into this temple she admits a peculiar 
lover.” 

He paused, regarding her with positive malice. 
She was to understand that his imagination, 
caught in the meshes of retrogression, had found 
there a species of confidence. It behoved her to 
step with almost supernatural caution in this place 
of prejudice and suspicion. 

“ Go on, dear Hadden. If I’m out of it, be- 
lieve me it’s not from stupidity or indifference; 


264 The Sinking Ship 

it’s the curse of the too close relationship. Go 
on. I’d like to know that there was some of my 
poignancy of feeling in her even if it pricks now 
and then. It has seemed mean, immoral, mon- 
strous, to produce such a smooth and perfect 
shape and endow it with no passions, as though 
one retained the kernel of existence and only gave 
up a part of the shell. She brings a lover to her 
temple, and she calls him by a peculiar name.” 

“ You’ve turned my observation about a bit,” 
he said coldly; “but no matter. As for the 
name, surely you can guess it.” 

“ I’d rather you told me.” 

“What, not sure of your ground for once? 
Well, perhaps, it’s not surprising; that perplexing 
Son of a carpenter has a way of putting one’s in- 
telligence out of court; but she talks of Jesus 
Christ in a quite unaffected and singularly ef- 
fective manner, and — she may be right. At all 
events she’s confidence on her side; she’s the be- 
lief that He walks in her garden; she’s all the 
spiritual advantages that appertain to such a 


A Prophet of Baal 265 

miraculous feat. And what have we, I ask you, 
to set against them ? '' 

“ Quicker pulses,” she insinuated, “ variety of 
idea.” But he laughed disagreeably. 

“ The pulse of the fever patient, the variety of 
a music-hall. You can’t say we’ve found con- 
sistency, certainly, or even health; we rise and 
fall without adequate reason; we call down fire 
from heaven in our moments of exuberance, hut 
it doesn't come. Now all this argues a defect in 
our government. We’re not satisfied, and she is. 
Suppose this belief of hers, which to us appears 
extraordinary, should be what she imagines it to 
be — an instrument through which the Ruler of the 
universe is enabled to come into direct and benefi- 
cent contact with human nature; suppose this 
unassertive girl has discovered the missing key.” 

‘‘ Suppose,” she answered sharply, ‘‘ we turn 
a little common-sense on to the argument.” 

“No; Fm inclined to indulge uncommon 
sense.” 

She was quick to note the threat in his attitude. 


266 The Sinking Ship 

quick to smile and sigh, to fall back into the 
shelter of her air of abstraction. 

“ It won’t take us far, but it takes us fast. 
Yes, we’ll be illusionists. On such a night as this 
it would be inartistic to be anything else.” 

“ Then she’s inartistic, for she’ll have nothing 
to say to illusion.” 

It seems she had a good deal to say to you 
though.” 

He winced under the retort, delivered with im- 
pressive placidity, and promptly she followed up 
her advantage. 

“ You spoke of cruelty, Hadden, of an impotent 
man. What did you mean ? ” 

I spoke too soon, too lightly. After all, that 
poor old fellow in the Bible had thirty-eight years 
of disappointment. I’ve not had thirty-eight 
hours of it yet.” 

She disappointed you? Of what? ” 

‘‘ Let me think.” ^ 

‘‘No, that means you’re about to invent, which 
means again you’ve something to conceal — a 


A Prophet of Baal 267 

secret — you and Sibyl with a secret ! And here's 
the man and the maid and the moon once more, 
and once more I — Fm frightened ! " 

And what are you, frightened of ? " 

‘‘ This talk of passivity; it isn't natural. This 
tale of a temple; it isn't true. You say she'll have 
none of illusion, and I begin to fear she's carry- 
ing illusion to such a point that I, with all my ex- 
travagance of temperament, don't dare to ap- 
proach. Oh, Hadden, dear, deluded boy, don't 
you see, don't you understand where the light 
comes from? Have you never been in love for 
the first time? No; don't interrupt. Fve been 
through it all, and I know. She isn't my child 
for nothing, it seems. She loves you. I ought 
to have guessed before, but I was wrapped up in 
other visions. You stand to her innocent and 
quite inexperienced fancy for love incarnate, and 
you'll have to stand to many another maiden 
fancy in that form before you've done; and all the 
figures expressive of love, from the figure of the 
mild-eyed Christ downwards, are joined to you. 


268 


The Sinking Ship 

She loves you. And now we’re on practical 
ground again, on more practical ground, my 
friend, than you and I have ever trod together; 
for Fm a mother, if a rather eccentric and care- 
less mother, and I can’t sit by and see my child 
hurt. She loves you, and you must come for- 
ward with the ring or disappear altogether, and 
let some one else substantiate for her this dream 
of a new heaven and a new earth. She loves you, 
and, Hadden, let me tell you such love is not to be 
despised, though it swings somewhat foolishly be- 
tween mysticism and prose.” 

“ I offered no contempt,” he put in quickly; and 
she stopped for a moment, eyeing him warily. 

‘‘ No, you offered love — love on an impulse, 
and she doesn’t approve of impulses; she wasn’t 
ready for a declaration; she claims the pretty 
virgin prerogative of saying ‘ no.’ But she’ll 
change the answer right enough, if only you’ll 
give her time; and you will give her time, for 
your own sake as well as hers. I’ve pleaded this 
particular cause before, but now I’ve a double 


A Prophet of Baal 269 

motive behind my efforts at persuasion. There’s 
mother-love in me — repressed, but not destroyed. 
I’ve struggled once to drive you back into the arms 
of a wife — of any wife. Now it’s a particular 
wife, and such a good and suitable one. You 
don’t know all her virtues, as Lydie and I do. 
For years she’s kept the household wheels run- 
ning smoothly; and it isn’t an easy job with no 
less than three artists to consider. She’s kind 
and honest, she’s capable and unselfish, and I’m 
not sure that if you probed that ‘ no ’ of hers 
down to its root you wouldn’t find it connected 
with a sense of family duty.” 

Her acumen certainly went far enough to 
startle him, and as certainly it exposed a flaw in 
Sibyl’s logic. Again that sense of the ridiculous 
seized him, weakening yet further his powers of 
resistance. They had maligned her between 
them, for was she not tearing with her own hands 
that bond he had so treacherously attempted to 
repudiate? Past him she too looked out into 
the night, claiming a partisan. How was it pos- 


zjo The Sinking Ship 

sible, he asked himself in ever-swelling bewilder- 
ment, to distinguish the true Defender from the 
false Pretender of the mysterious faith abroad, 
when each showed so glad and confident a front ? 
With one hand she wrought her cabalistic and en- 
ticing signs, while, with the other, she pushed 
him away, as one pushes a too venturesome child 
out of a danger zone. And thus, step by step, by 
means of inimitable patience and finely-colored 
rhetoric, she turned him back into the half-ex- 
plored country of her personality. 

‘‘ One can’t have everything, dear friend, in 
this world. For me there is no peace. I’m a 
stormy petrel doomed to beat, for ever and for 
always, against the wind; she’s the dove crooning 
its dulcet note from morn till eve. You’ll have 
hours of recoil from the monotony of it, but you’ll 
escape the pang that, like a flame, circles my path. 
There are three depths of existence, as I don’t 
need to remind you; the fool takes the first, the 
wise man takes the second, and the genius takes 
the third. There’s the shallow water, where the 


A Prophet of Baal 


271 


great majority dip and float and achieve nothing; 
at intervals somebody throws up a cupful of 
water and creates what we call a fashionable sen- 
sation. Then there’s the middle course — and it’s 
here I’d have you make your mark. All the con- 
ditions are favorable to success; the water is just 
deep enough to conceal the movements of your 
limbs, and not deep enough to drown you; it’s 
here that the popular artist has his happy hunting- 
ground; it’s here you make money and friends; 
it’s here the laurel grows; it’s here photographers 
and biographers collect in masses vying with one 
another for the honor of advertising your 
prowess. But, move on to the third degree, and 
pressure begins; one suffers to be beautiful, they 
say, but one suffers infinitely more to be great; 
one goes down to the marvelous sea-bottom 
slowly and cumbrously as a diver, and one goes 
alone; the gallery stays behind to make its living 
on the feats of the middle man; we go alone to 
garner knowledge, and when we find a fragment 
and bring it up to the surface, there’s more mock- 


272 The Sinking Ship 

ery than acclamation to be faced. You see, the 
public appetite for truth has been poisoned; they 
don’t want harsh and often horrid history; they 
want the fairy tales on which fancy has been 
long nourished; now and then they gather round 
to enjoy the excitement of a corpse. Give your 
life in the cause of speculation, and, should the 
mode of the moment prove propitious, they’ll ex- 
alt the discarded shell of you. Oh, it’s a profit- 
less and exhausting game, played from the stand- 
ard of the independent; and so I say for the last 
time, go hack; you’re not fashioned for martyr- 
dom, its cross and its crown; you’re fashioned to 
play husband and father and favorite of fortune. 
That bent in you towards realism, towards evolu- 
tion, was a cruelty if you like. Neither fully pos- 
sessing genius, nor fully possessed by it, you’ll 
hang half-way between heaven and hell if you 
don’t make an early and a definite choice.” 

You forget,” he said helplessly, “ that we’ve 
fought all this out before, and — and it wasn’t I 
who yielded.” 


273 


A Prophet of Baal 

‘‘No, I don’t forget; the memory of my de- 
feat was too sweet to be forgotten; but for all that 
it’s got to go into the limbo of inconsequent 
things. You’re half-hearted, and so to me and 
my cause you’re useless, worse than useless, you’re 
dangerous ; you keep us back like a sick woman or 
a child; you hamper us with your questions and 
your doubts and your perpetual glances be- 
hind, with your quibbles and your spurts of 
confidence, and your corresponding drops of 
depression.” 

“ But — but I’m not sure, Vanda ” 

“ That’s where it is,” she broke in hotly, 
“ you’re not sure, and one has to be sure, dead 
sure, in my camp. I was sure until you tam- 
pered with my imagination, and I mean to be sure 
again. I’ve lingered, playing with your possi- 
bilities, brooding on what you could have done, 
or would have done, or half did; but that’s all 
over. Just now you said we call down fire from 
heaven and it doesn’t come; of course it doesn’t 
while you’re standing round with your resolution 


274 Sinking Ship 

bobbing up and down like a cork in a pail of 
water. It comes right enough when Fm alone, 
when Fm free of you and your skepticism; it’s 
coming now; you’ve only to look at me, to touch 
me, to know that I tell the truth. Do you dare to 
say that there’s nothing here to-night under this 
ghostly tree but two potty little human intel- 
ligences discussing the pros and cons of a mod- 
ern marriage ? I tell you there’s fire on my altars, 
sacred fire, leaping and burning, lit by a human 
will at unity with itself. I tell you that the miss- 
ing key is resolution, and that miracle is solely and 
simply the control of the mind. I tell you that, if 
I chose, if there wasn’t lurking in my veins a 
grain of the poison that the world calls mother- 
love, and I feel inclined to call mother-fanaticism, 
I could bend your wavering will to mine as I 
could bend a sapling. I should whistle, oh, so 
softly, and that deeper, truer, bolder self of 
yours would start and thrill and follow, as the 
children followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin, far 
over the hills of common mortal desire. I take 


A Prophet of Baal 275 

my hand away, but if I brought it back, if I laid it 
on yours, it would be as though I set a match to a 
barrel of gunpowder; all the prisoned faculty in 
you, lying inert, would burst into a blaze, and, 
joint spirits of fire, we two should rush together 
through the homestead and the Houses of Parlia- 
ment, we should burn and destroy, and, from the 
ashes in our track, would rise, phcenix-like, the 
embryonic figure of true development, for in you, 
in me, in every human will that turns a rebel to 
vulgar law lies hid the germ of omnipotence. 
Look at me. What am I nourished on? The 
love of a husband? It didn’t take you long to 
discover that he’s a paralytic. The love of a 
mother and a child ? The one keeps her soul in a 
make-up box, and the other ” — her voice faltered 
effectively — the other sits in the shelter of my 
skirts and builds a toy temple with toy blocks. 
I take my relaxation with them, but my life is 
drawn from a very different source — my life, that 
fierce and often frenzied thing that leaps and 
burns and wars in me, and drives me out from 


The Sinking Ship 


276 

the garden to the desert, from the desert to the 
forest, from the forest to the city. Like wind I 
wander from the unknown to the known and back 
again; like wind I drop and rise and drop again; 
now the accomplice of one element, now the slave 
of another, and now the mistress of a couple, rid- 
ing them far into the secret haunts of science, but 
never quite so far as to forget the way back to 
earth until — until you came and spoke over me 
the fatal word — ^my order of full release. Cap- 
tive yourself to a hereditary instinct, you are al- 
lowed to open the door for others, for me. I feel 
like a great bird, an eagle prisoned so long that it 
scarce knows how to take advantage of its liberty; 
it lingers, trying, I fancy, to thank the deliverer 
before it starts winging a joyous way to the sun. 
And I mustn’t thank you; I mustn’t stay beside 
you. I should infect you with the wonderful 
knowledge you’re not to use yourself, this 
knowledge of treasure hidden so near to home 
that nobody has discovered and employed it, this 
knowledge that allows one to claim, and to claim 


A Prophet of Baal 277 

legally, the empire, not only of this most cir- 
cumscribed little world, but of worlds. — Oh my 
God ! what’s that ? ” 

That was the shrill hoot of a motor-horn, and, 
with a loud whir the car ran out of the darkness 
almost on the top of them, to pull up abruptly at 
the door of the cottage. 

O God ! ” said Vanda again in a stifled voice, 
and she half rose in her seat, putting a trembling 
hand to her heart. 

The young man made no comment, and no 
movement, save for a single glance at the object 
of interruption, but his face had lost every vestige 
of its color. She stared over his shoulder with 
dilating eyes at the group beside the front door; 
he stared as rigidly at her. 

“ It’s Lydie,” she whispered, ‘‘ and she’s dead.” 
The car was full of strange people; they were doc- 
tors. Two of them were holding her in the ton- 
neau. ‘‘ See, they’re lifting her out now. In a 
minute,” she added with hysterical vehemence, 

they’ll call for me, and I daren’t go. I know 


278 The Sinking Ship 

how she’ll look. And it might have been me; it 
nearly was me. They wanted me to go. I almost 
went. Hadden, Hadden, they’re coming to fetch 
me, and I won’t go! You’re a man; you must 
stand between me and that horrible thing — a dead 
person who didn’t want to die, who wasn’t fit to 
die. Oh, will you never go? Why do you sit 
there staring at me like that ? ” 

A shriek from a white-aproned maid now vis- 
ible on the steps added confusion to the scene 
and fuel to Vanda’s terror, but he was looking at 
another point in the situation; he was listening, 
for the third and last time, to the voice of non- 
human intervention. 

You prophet of Baal,” he said at last with al- 
most brutal emphasis, ‘‘ where’s the fire upon your 
altars now ? Fire ! They were twopenny squibs, 
but they were good enough for me. Yes, I’m 
going, I and my belated enlightenment. You’ve 
been too much for me, but some one — some thing 
has been a little too much for you.” 

Conscious now that she was trapped between 


A Prophet of Baal 279 

two enemies, she looked distractedly from him to 
the man advancing in their direction. 

“ I — Vm ill,” she gasped. You must make 
allowances. This gentleman will understand. 
Tm very highly strung. If — if it’s bad 

news ” she stopped, and the intruder, who 

was beside them, laid a reassuring hand upon her 
arm. 

“ An accident, madam,” he announced. ‘‘ The 
old lady has been cut and bruised. But there is 
no occasion for alarm; we have every hope of 
pulling her safely through.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


INFLAMMATION 

Mrs. Winchester, however, was not an easy- 
patient to pull through. Her injuries were not 
very serious in themselves, but her unbalanced 
mind promptly set up inflammation. In the first 
place she refused to be nursed at the cottage, so 
the doctors, fearful of irritating her into a fever, 
resigned the point, and, on the third day follow- 
ing the accident, she was conveyed to town in an 
invalid carriage, escorted by an imposing retinue 
of attendants. For twenty-four hours it looked 
as though the move were to prove beneficial. The 
lady allowed her mind a respite from worry. 
With her favorite physician established at her 
bedside, with the familiar scent of her beloved 
London in her nostrils, with friends ringing the 

bell at frequent intervals to leave flowers and 
280 


Inflammation 


281 

kind inquiries, she was disposed to look on the 
brighter side of the situation; but a couple of 
sleepless nights washed this tendency out of her, 
and the sight of the long scar running from fore- 
head to chin down the left side of her face (a 
sight to which she insisted on being treated) drove 
her once more into a state of agitation. At the 
root of it lay a terror of the General’s defection. 
It transpired that the old gentleman was actually 
in the middle of an observation, which could only 
be the prelude to proposal, when the accident took 
place; indeed, according to Lydie’s recital, it was 
to his mental perturbation that they owed it, for, 
though the cart into which the car had run was 
on the wrong side of the road, the pace was slow, 
and a person with his full wits about him could 
easily enough have escaped collision. The poor 
soul was eloquent on the subject of this ironic act 
on the part of fortune. By day and by night she 
tormented herself, and all within hearing, with 
the question as to how far the vision of herself 
in disarray might be calculated to disillusion. 


282 The Sinking Ship 

With a persistency that would have been in- 
valuable in cross-examination, she worried out the 
degree of damage that must have been apparent, 
deducting so much for the witness’s condition at 
the time. “ Was her wig straight when Vanda 
saw her?” “Was her complexion disturbed?” 
“Had the doctors been tactful?” To the an- 
swers to these sums she proceeded to add such im- 
pressions as could be gathered from the frequency 
of the gentleman’s calls, from the tone of his in- 
quiries, from the value of his floral offerings; 
but as she made up her figures differently every 
time, it was impossible to establish a satisfactory 
result, and when, as occasionally happened, a day 
without a visit intervened, there was uproar in 
the sick-room, an uproar of which Vanda was the 
chief victim. The two nurses had early been de- 
nounced as heartless machines, while, to every 
one’s astonishment, Sibyl had been forbidden en- 
trance. Innumerable were the motives that 
Lydie offered in explanation of this edict. “ The 
child was too young to be teased by the sight of 


Inflammation 283 

suffering ” ; ‘‘ she was too new to her stage work 
to be disturbed by it”; ‘‘she was too delicate to 
stand the strain,” etc. The reasons would have 
passed muster had they emanated from other lips, 
but from Lydie’s they rang grotesquely, and 
Vanda cudgeled her brains for the true one — 
the one her mother saw fit to suppress. More 
than once she came upon the track of it, but al- 
ways with the same result; her courage to pursue 
would flag, turn tail, drive her back into the land 
of make-believe, where alone she could find pastur- 
age to her liking. 

There was little enough of it going in these 
days, for it was on her that the invalid elected to 
lean, and no allowance was made for the tax upon 
her time and vitality ; she was compelled to come 
straight from her hasty supper to a three-hour 
watch, for the hours preceding the dawn were the 
most terrible of the twenty- four, and Lydie in- 
sisted on a sympathetic companion to share the 
horror of them. It was hard work to keep sleep 
at bay, but it was yet harder work to face that 


284 The Sinking Ship 

perpetual demand for reassurance; nor was re- 
assurance all that the patient exacted. There was 
an old wound that she seemed positively to de- 
light in touching, in tearing, a wound of which, in 
some secret fashion, she must have long been cog- 
nizant, for now, with an unmistakable air of 
malignity, she essayed to harp upon the bond be- 
tween herself and her daughter; by the hour to- 
gether she would prattle of their common views 
and aims, of mental and physical resemblance. 
Ruthlessly she would remove, brick by brick, the 
wall that is set up round each human personality 
until the scared and wretched listener would actu- 
ally feel, in every sensitive fiber of her being, the 
intrusion of this detestable relationship, until it 
seemed to her that the trespass was accomplished 
and their two natures ran, a fierce and dirty river, 
towards the sea of utter annihilation. Lydie told, 
it is true, of depths to which Vanda had as yet 
not fallen; in her delirium she let drop the tale 
of incidents and adventures blacker than any in 
the memory of her companion, but the difference. 


Inflammation 


285 

as the younger was quick to recognize, lay only in 
degree of opportunity. Look where she would 
it was to find on every face, animate or inanimate, 
the hideous reflection of herself. With futile 
misery she thought of the night of the accident, 
of her self-betrayal, forced from her by circum- 
stances that, do what she would, she was unable 
to disconnect from a superhuman agency. Her 
victim had been under protection, though she still 
refused to christen his protector, and between 
them this black memory of interference lay like 
an impenetrable cloud. They seldom spoke, 
though from the wings he watched her nightly, 
watched with a sneer she felt rather than saw 
her finished and almost flawless portrayal of the 
role that had once meant so much to both. Dark 
indeed were the thoughts she brought to the sick- 
chamber, and one darker than all the rest gradu- 
ally forced its way to the front. Against her will, 
against all that was left of gentle and of generous 
feeling, there crept into her distorted mind the 
thought of release; and release was a figure in a 


286 


The Sinking Ship 


black mask. Night after night as she sat beside 
the tossing patient she found her riotous imagina- 
tion binding the scarred face in another sort of 
bandage, folding the restless hands one upon the 
other, letting down into the dank earth a phantom 
coffin in which a very real cause of distress lay 
safely confined ; and, as though an instinct warned 
the other of treachery, her antagonism grew, her 
you and I became a lash falling with pitiless regu- 
larity on a raw back, until Vanda, coming in one 
night weary and fearful from the theater, found 
herself in the midst of the inevitable crisis. Story, 
very white about the gills, very shaky about the 
legs, took upon himself the part of spokesman. Mrs. 
Winchester, so it appeared, was ‘‘ going on some- 
thing awful,^’ she had driven every one from her 
room ; the nurse in attendance had, in fact, been 
driven with contumely and without luggage from 
the house ; the other was asleep, or there was lit- 
tle doubt she would have shared a similar fate; 
every one hardy enough to put a nose into the 
room had had it bitten off. The origin of the dis- 


Inflammation 


287 

turbance took some ferreting out; but eventually, 
with the help of various witnesses, it was ex- 
plained. Maude, pinker even than ordinary with 
fright and confusion, admitted that, on the invita- 
tion of the nurse, she had visited the sick-room, 
and, deceived by the patient’s pretense of sleep, 
had whispered an incautious question or two, 
and received an equally incautious answer. The 
talk was ominous; and suddenly Mrs. Winchester 
had opened her eyes and routed them. Caught 
in the wheel of morbid interest and importance, 
the girl would have continued, but her mistress 
signed to her to stop. Listlessly she looked round 
the circle, her eye lingering an instant on that of 
Sibyl. 

‘‘ Might I go, mother? I’m used to her.” But 
Vanda shook her head. 

‘‘ She won’t hear of it, my dear. The men- 
tion of your name is like a red rag to a bull. 
Ring up Dr. Matty for me; he ought to be here. 
Had nobody the sense to send for him ? ” 

‘‘The doctor was hout, ma’am,” Story ex- 


288 


The Sinking Ship 


plained with an air of injured dignity. I rang 
up myself, and the man promised to give the mes- 
sage when the doctor come in. There was no 
more to be done as I could see, ma’am, though 
maybe I’m wrong, being but a servant and a pus- 
son of limited hintelligence.” 

“ I’m blaming nobody, my good man,” she re- 
turned, not over graciously. “ Clear this room 
for me. Sibyl, wait up till your father arrives 
and get him to join me upstairs; meantime I’ll do 
what I can with her.” 

Wearily she passed out and up the staircase, 
moving ever more slowly as she neared her hated 
destination. Already through the open door 
there came to her ear the sound of a raving 
voice, and as she crossed the threshold it was to 
be met with a regular fusillade of invective. 

So you’ve come at last, have you ? A pretty 
thing if I was to die while you were reveling in 
your heroics before the public. I’m done for, 
and you knew it all along — everybody knew it ex- 
cept me, the one person concerned. I’m dying. 


Inflammation 289 

and there isn’t even a doctor to smooth the end 
for me. Matty’s like the rest of you, turns up 
as regular as the milk to feel my pulse at five 
shillings a beat, but takes care to keep clear when 
there’s anything to do. What do you stand 
staring there for as if I was a side-show? What 
are you going to do now you have put in 
an appearance? What have you got to say? 
You’ve always found a reason for everything; 
find a reason for my being tormented like 
this.” 

You’re dreaming, Lydie. Let me smooth the 
clothes; let me read to you. There’s no need for 
all this excitement; only be calm. You’re no 
more likely to die than I am if you won’t work 
yourself up into a fever.” But Mrs. Winchester’s 
fears were not to be allayed so easily. 

Oh, that’s your opinion, is it ? ” she snorted. 
“ Unfortunately for me I know only too well the 
source from which you get all your blessed ideas. 
It’s inconvenient, it’s inartistic, to talk of real 
trouble, of real pain, of real danger. You want 


290 The Sinking Ship 

me to hold my tongue; you’d ask me to let my- 
self be snuffed out without a nasty fuss; you don’t 
like a fuss unless you make it yourself. And 
where’s that lay-figure of a husband of yours, I’d 
like to know? There’s no love lost between us; 
but, if it’s only for the sake of common decency, 
he might show up.” 

“ He will, dear, directly; I heard a hansom just 
now. I told Sibyl to send him. He’ll be here in 
a minute or two when he’s had something to 
eat.” 

‘‘ Something to eat ! ” raged the old woman. 

Trust him not to risk a mental upset till he’s out- 
side a comfortable meal.” But for once Adrian 
disappointed her cynical forecast. 

“ Lydie, you old fool ! ” he said, stepping soft- 
footed to the side of the bed, ‘‘ don’t waste your 
powder and shot on me; put it all into the task of 
getting well. You’ve got the pluck of ten if only 
you’d use it.’' 

Butter ! ” she retorted, but with a slight 
diminution of ferocity. His handsome, smiling 


Inflammation 


291 

face touched some reassuring chord, and there 
was appeal behind the gleaming eye. 

'' Butter ! I’ve lived on it, and I suppose you 
think I ought to die on it.” Then, at the thought 
of death, her passion rose again; she glared from 
one to the other, sitting upright, a skinny arm ex- 
tended in menace. 

“ But you won’t get me off so easy, let me tell 
you. I know the game now, and a nice, pleasant 
game it is for everybody but me. When Matty 
comes he’ll prescribe a sleeping draught, and 
you’ll coax and threaten and talk what you’ll call 
common-sense to make me swallow it; but I’m 
going to fight, so now you know. I’m not going 
to consider all your beastly feelings. You’ve 
never considered mine. I’ve been tricked and 
lied to, and told I’m better, and all the time I 
hadn’t a dog’s chance, and you knew it. The idea 
was to ship me off without a row. But I’ve out- 
witted you, or rather those two gossips have. You 
don’t catch me playing the meek, old grandmother 
going out in order of precedence with a ‘ God 


292 The Sinking Ship 

bless you, my children ! ’ Oh, you humbugs, you 
frauds, you murderers ! she added with ferocity, 
stimulated, it would seem, by the man’s regard of 
her, “ you’d stand there and watch me give up 
the ghost as calmly as if I was one of your stage 
performers. Oh, I can see you in your black 
coat playing the crocodile at my funeral, smacking 
your lips over the sherry, directing the operations, 
playing the leading gentleman to the delight and 
the edification of every one present; but I’m not 
going to fit into your picture. Do you hear? 
I’m not going to die easy to please you or her 
either.” 

Why die at all ? ” he asked, with a touch of 
raillery, and again her fury yielded a little way. 

Heaven knows I don’t want to,” she wailed 
pitifully. 

‘‘ And I bet you twenty pounds to one you cheat 
the undertaker. I bet you you’re back in your 
old part this day month in spite ” — he added with 
subtle inflection — of what the Bay ley woman 
says.” 


Inflammation 


293 


And what does the Bay ley woman say ? ’’ 
Says you haven’t the spirit to get over a 
shock like this at your time of life.” 

My time of life! ” she shrieked. “ Why, Fm 
five years her junior.” 

“Of course you are; that’s where the joke 
comes in; that’s where Fd have you come in. 
Think of her face, Lydie, when you show up as 
sound as a bell and turn her out of a temporary 
possession of your part. She’s making a devil 
of a mess of it, I may tell you.” 

Finding her inclined to consider these soothing 
notions, he embarked good-humoredly on a quite 
fictitious history of the degeneration of the play 
since the accident, and presently he had the grati- 
fication of seeing her fall back upon her pillows, 
of hearing her laugh with some vestige of return- 
ing gaiety. Her violence of mood simmered 
down, and there went with it much of her 
strength. She looked very frail and spent; and 
again there stirred in the daughter’s heart that 
cruel and horrid thought, now so painfully 


294 The Sinking Ship 

familiar, a thought to which the doctor, coming 
in an hour or so later, gave an unconscious en- 
couragement. He sat for a considerable time 
wit^h the limp wrist between his fingers ; he spoke 
equably and reassuringly to his patient; but Vanda 
heard under each suave utterance a repetition of 
the fancy leaping so wildly in her breast. Mrs. 
Winchester took her draught with unexpected 
meekness, she even took a little playful reproach 
for her treatment of the nurse, though she refused 
to allow the remaining one to be summoned. 
Perhaps it was Dr. Matty’s quiet acceptance of 
this ultimatum that emphasized for Vanda the 
true position of affairs. In obedience to a ges- 
ture, she followed him from the room to another 
on the ground-floor, where she stood with lowered 
eyelids listening to those ambiguous phrases that 
have conveyed despair inexpressible to many a 
warm heart. She was glad to think that science 
has its limits, that her companion could see in her 
no more than a woman trained to control emo- 
tion, glad to think that the inmost depths of in- 


Inflammation 


295 

dividuality may be preserved from analysis and 
the pillory of public condemnation. He gave her 
sympathy, directions, and something as near a 
promise of that gruesome order of release she 
hankered for as his profession allowed. Slowly 
she returned to her post, signing to her all-too- 
ready husband to leave the room. 

The night was close, in spite of a half-opened 
window; there was no sound but the tick of the 
clock and the soft breathing of that still form 
upon the bed; while, to the silent watcher, it 
seemed as though this last declaration of vitality 
was sounded in fainter and ever fainter notes, as 
though presently it must decrease to nothingness, 
must pass, must cease to press upon her own germ 
of being. But, with the coming of the dawn, the 
old woman began to fidget, to mutter, to break 
out once more into lurid recital, half historical 
and half fictional, and wholly sordid. And 
Vanda watched the long procession pass in help- 
less protest, recognizing now a human shape, now 
a monster of the diseased imagination, alike dis- 


296 


The Sinking Ship 


torted by contact with the mind that gave them 
representation. “Farrer!’’ the dreamer called 
out more than once, and on each occasion Vanda 
saw a youth emerge from out of the shadows of 
the room; his face was beautiful but ghastly pale, 
and a real line ran from ear to ear across the 
region of the throat; and always in his floating 
track there followed the semblance of a woman, 
a girlish thing hidden in falling hair, a very Mar- 
guerite, fashioned to embosom wrong, her only 
movement a wringing of the hands. Time and 
again they floated past, and always they seemed to 
stare with their desperate and reproachful eyes, 
past and through the author of their troubled 
story, at herself — herself, innocent of all save a 
careless knowledge of it. And it was the same 
with all, with this whole army of ghosts; they 
were the ghosts of wrongs committed by an- 
other ; but the alibi she strove to prove was beaten 
down, ruled out of court; round her circled, in 
obedience to that dread voice, the legions of 
forces she had tried to use for illegal purposes. 


Inflammation 


297 

Friendship, passion, art, genius and interest had 
control; they combined, they split and they re- 
joined, exchanging shapes with bewildering and 
demoralizing adaptability until the spectacle of 
their frenzied powers saw fit to culminate in a 
single picture, aggressively clear, the picture of 
a cart in which they two, mother and child, stared 
each into the wild face of the other to escape the 
yet wilder faces of their judges and executioners; 
for it was to the guillotine that they traveled; it 
was to mutual death and mutual disgrace they 
were being hurried. In a moment, in another 
moment, the horror so long evaded, so long de- 
fied, would be upon them, the knife would 
fall. But with a scream Vanda sprang to her 
feet. 

“ Be still ! she exclaimed, and spread imperi- 
ous arms above the bed. ‘‘ Be still, and we'll 
find rescue even now." 

Startled by the noise, Lydie's mind came 
laboriously back from its journey across the 
boundary of reason. 


298 The Sinking Ship 

‘‘ Is it you ? ’’ she said quaveringly. ‘‘ Is it 
only you ? And what do you want ? 

“ Peace; a little spell of peace/’ 

“ You won’t find it here, my girl. I’ve been 
all ways to look ; I’ve been all ways,” she added in 
rising excitement ; “ and there’s nothing here but 
pain and cruelty. All the gates are shut. Where 
am I to go to? I must go somewhere. What’s 
to happen, Vanda, what’s to happen now? ” 

I don’t know. Let me fetch somebody — the 
nurse; she’s in the next room.” 

“ What are you frightened of ? ” the sick 
woman inquired harshly. ‘‘ You’re in no 
danger.” 

‘‘ I thought I was; I thought that we were 
bound together; that we were going together to 
an awful death — you and I, you and I.” 

‘‘ Death ! ” the other whispered, and sat upright 
clutching at her daughter’s arm. Is it death 
then after all? You said it wasn’t; he said it 
wasn’t. You promised I should go back to the 
life I know — to the theater.” 


Inflammation 


299 


Yes, yes,’’ Vanda answered soothingly, con- 
trolling her own terror by a supreme effort of 
will. ‘‘ Lie down and go to sleep.” But Lydie 
laughed, a weird and bitter laugh, pressing her 
claw-like fingers more firmly into the beautiful 
arm supporting her. “ I’ll sleep when I know 
the truth, and not before. Tell me the truth. 
What did that sleek beast of a doctor say to you? 
The truth — the truth ! ” 

But — but I’ve told you, dearest. You’re bet- 
ter. You’ll be all right soon if only — if only you 
wouldn’t work yourself up into these wild moods. 
Won’t you believe me? ” 

‘‘ Why should I believe you ? ” 

“ I’m your own child, Lydie. Why should I 
deceive and lie to you ? ” 

“ My own child — ^yes. Perhaps I can’t quite 
hear a child of mine telling the truth; perhaps I 
know deep down in my evil old mind that I 
couldn’t create a child to speak the truth. But 
you did,” she cried on a sudden impulse of mem- 
ory, “and I want her. Do you hear? I want 


300 The Sinking Ship 

her at once beside me; I want her on the edge of 
the bed; I want to see her smile; I want to see 
her fold her hands in her lap. We never fold 
ours; they're always twitching, twitching, twitch- 
ing." 

‘‘ Sibyl? You want Sibyl? But you said " 

Good God ! child, what's it signify what I 
said? I say now that I want her. I've looked 
into all the other faces, and they're hard and 
mean. There's only Sibyl left. Fetch her. 
Don't stand there like a graven image ; fetch her, 
and be sharp or it will be too late ! " 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE WRITING ON THE WALL 

‘‘ So far, good/' she said some minutes later. 

But is it safe to ask questions ? " 

She was back among her pillows looking out of 
them with fever-inflamed eyes at the girl seated, 
as she had desired, upon the edge of her bd. 

Sibyl blinked a little under the light of the 
candle she had brought and set upon the table 
among the lotions and the medicine bottles. Over 
her white dressing-gown her hair was scattered 
loosely, lending to her aspect an added air of 
youth and innocence. 

“ There's the smile," said her grandmother, 
peering nervously at her, and there are the still 
hands. She's not afraid. But then Adrian 
wasn't afraid either; and she's his child. Sup- 
pose — suppose it's only callousness. We're in- 
301 


302 The Sinking Ship 

fected stock. And now she's come, and I don’t 
dare to put the question. Vanda, Vanda, take 
her away again, keep her away; keep the truth 
away. It’s death, and I’m not fit to die.” 

The candle guttered, and the girl leaned for- 
ward to snuff it. The calm gesture served to 
quiet the patient. 

“ No, don’t go, Sibyl; stay where you are. 
But you mustn’t speak unless I ask you to. I 
can breathe better now. You brought something 
into the room with you though. I’m not sure 
what it is, or whether I can bear it. I’ve tried 
to keep you out, Sibyl, but I couldn’t. You know 
something I’ve refused to know — the story of — 
of ” 

‘‘ The story of life,” said Sibyl with reassuring 
simplicity. 

I thought it was the story of death, but it 
isn’t; you swear to me it isn’t.” The old woman 
was up again on her lean elbow, her wizened face 
alight. 

“ Life, Sibyl; and you’re sure?” 


The Writing on the Wall 303 
“ Quite, quite sure/’ 

Mrs. Winchester fell back again, sobbing hys- 
terically; then, ceasing as suddenly as she had 
begun, she turned upon her daughter. 

Do you hear ? ” she screamed, with devilish 
satisfaction, do you hear that ? Put that in 
your pipe and smoke it. You’ve not done with 
me yet,” then, her note softening, she turned to 
the young girl and looked into the grave, pitiful 
eyes with some degree of apology. “ You don’t 
know their games, my dear; you don’t know what 
they’re up to, what they’re waiting for and pray- 
ing for; you don’t know,” she went on deliriously, 
what she keeps in that black heart of hers. But 
I’ll tell you; lean closer and I’ll tell you. It’s 
murder; it’s the murder of her own mother — she 
and he together — the one as bad and as merciless 
as the other. He looks at her, and she at him, 
and both of them at me; and it’s a conspiracy of 
silence. But I’ve found it out. I know and she 
knows; and she knows I know; and she’s afraid to 
look me in the face. She’s waiting, Sibyl, for 


304 The Sinking Ship 

the moment when I get tired of resistance; for the 
moment when I lie still; and then — and then 
they’ll close in and seize me, and bind me tight in 
a winding-sheet, and nail me fast in a coffin, and 
carry me out feet-foremost. They’ll talk of a 
happy release; and they’ll rig up a fine funeral; 
and there’ll be the company in mourning and half- 
mourning, with the Bayley woman not knowing 
how to keep the grin ofif her face till the earth’s 
over me; and there’ll be Lady Alice quoting 
poetry : ‘ To live in hearts we leave behind, is 
not to die.’ Ugh! I can hear her. And with 
luck Adrian will book the Duchess, if she hasn’t 
a race meeting on; and he’ll support her to the 
grave-side; and she’ll talk of her own ‘dear de- 
parted,’ whose life with her was a hell. I can see 
’em all, that crew of humbugs, with Vanda in the 
middle trying to use her lace handkerchief with- 
out spoiling her make-up. I can see it all— all 
the mock misery, and my real misery ; shut up in 
that awful box; carried out and never carried 
back again.” 


The Writing on the Wall 305 

Sobbing once more she buried her face in the 
pillows, and Vanda, who had stood as though 
paralyzed during this tirade, moved hurriedly 
towards the door. 

“ I’m going, Sibyl, I’m going to my own room. 
I can’t stand any more of it. I’ve had weeks you 
know, and there’s a limit. I can do nothing. 
She’s taken this unaccountable suspicion of me 
into her mind, and I’m best out of the way. Try 
and soothe her; try and get her to sleep, and call 
the nurse if she’s too much for you.” 

Gone, has she ? ” said Lydie, turning her dis- 
torted face upwards. ‘‘ Bolted ? Well, I’m glad 
of it. I hate her ! Oh, my God, how I hate her, 
with her slithering body and her slithering, slid- 
ing mind ! How I hate her, and her stock of evil 
wisdom ! ” 

Hush ! dear. There isn’t any evil wisdom, as 
there isn’t any death. Listen. You shall be car- 
ried back. I can carry you back myself — not into 
this room, which smells of sickness, but right back 
into the past, when you were a girl like me.” 


3o6 


The Sinking Ship 


‘‘ I was never a girl, never a girl like you ; I was 
a genius,’^ the poor thing answered with a pathetic 
mixture of pride and despair. ‘‘ I was a genius 
and a beauty and a chip of the old block; and I 
hadn’t a chance. The blood was too strong, the 
blood of those who went before. There was 
Nelly the comedienne; she painted the town a fine 
scarlet in her day, I can tell you; and there was 
Nancy the tragedienne, and Pepita the dancer; 
and they were public favorites, the lot of them, 
and King’s favorites; and they didn’t want to be 
turned out of the flesh; and they’re in me, 
wrangling and whispering, urging me to all sorts 
of excess. Oh, the crimes and the follies they’ve 
prodded me to. I’ve been back to-night over the 
old ground, and — and it’s red with blood. I 
didn’t mean to kill — I didn’t want to kill; but 
they got in the way — they got in the way. Some- 
times, child, it was no more than a laugh that I 
produced, but they went mad under it, and they 
turned on one another, and there was death and 
pain and wrong behind me wherever I went.” 


The Writing on the Wall 307 

‘‘ You mustn’t look behind. You’ve paid for 
the past over and over again in miserable thoughts 
and fears. It’s gone, and you must look ahead. 
Look at me. See how calm I am; and yet I love 
you; I belong to you. If you were in danger I 
should be in danger too.” 

There was a thirsty look in Lydie’s eyes. 

Go on,” she murmured, “ it isn’t enough; it’s 
the cup, but I want water in it. You’ve got to 
prove a bond, not just to prattle of it as we do 
in our theater. Prove it; cross the gulf; come 
near enough for me to know you’re not an angel 
on a Christmas card.” 

Eagerly the young girl bent towards her com- 
panion, and, enthralled by their own intensity, 
both failed to note a movement in the doorway. 
Like a ghost unable to keep away from the scene 
of some past tragedy, Vanda was back again, 
watching, waiting, for she knew not what of suc- 
cor from the demon in her own breast. Impos- 
sible she found to sit alone, with the faint promise 
of miracle at work here. All her latent curiosity 


3o 8 The Sinking Ship 

concerning the secret consequence of Sibyl surged 
up and drove her back to the one spot from which 
explanation might emanate. What if the quiet 
vaunt were to be justified in her absence? What 
if the spirit of power were beneficent, and she, 
shut away in the prison of her own cowardice, 
should miss the word of rescue? She dared not 
keep away, she dared not face again the lash of 
that virulent tongue, and, choosing the middle 
course, she dropped furtively into the seat behind 
the screen. 

I love you ! said the clear, sure voice, ‘‘ and 
love is the bridge.” 

Love, love, love ! ” wailed the weak one with 
impatience. “ It’s a bridge I’ve turned to queer 
purposes. You’d never even understand them. 
It’s no use, no use. You’re a throw-back to that 
monkish ancestor of ours of whom we’ve made 
game so often. Yes, there was such a person; 
and I began to think there is such a person — that 
such persons don’t die like the rest of us. There’s 
a portrait of him in the box-room with his face 


The Writing on the Wall 309 

to the wall, but his eyes go through me with the 
look in yours. He went the whole hog, you 
know. Left his wife and his children, and took 
to peas in his shoes, and a hair shirt — to the 
whole ridiculous pageant of martyrdom, with a 
bonfire to top up with. And he spoke of love — 
he’d a kind of right to speak of it. But you 
don’t know the meaning of the term; you’re talk- 
ing out of a nunnery; you’ve never felt the throb 
of human longing, the insatiable hunger of human 
desire; you’ve never had a lover at your ear, much 
less a dozen, each with his own haunting tale of 
bliss. I like to look at you; you’re restful and 
cool and kind; but there’s no bridge, only the 
pretty talk of one.” A brief silence supervened; 
then the girl-note, infected now by a curious sug- 
gestion of diffidence, the diffidence of one who ex- 
poses a delicate nerve in her constitution. 

‘‘ If I told you, if I confessed, Lydie, that love 
is more to me than a beautiful and inspiring 
name, if I told you that the lover came, and that 
I wanted to listen to the story with every fiber in 


310 


The Sinking Ship 


my being — if I told you this, would it make a 
difference ? Could I come nearer ? 

A lover ! ’’ ejaculated her listener in utter sur- 
prise. A lover, Sibyl — already ? And why 
hasn’t somebody told me? I’m sure there’s been 
little enough to amuse me of late. A lover! 
And what’s he been saying to you ? But, no, they 
always say much the same thing. I’d rather hear 
what you said to him.” 

I said ‘ no,’ Lydie.” 

The answer was scarcely audible, and Vanda, 
craning her neck in the direction of the bed, 
caught it with difficulty. 

What, wasn’t he rich enough or handsome 
enough?” jeered the old worldling, striving to 
smother what in her inmost heart she recognized 
as a sense of disappointment if not dismay. 

“ He was so rich, so handsome, that I was 
tempted. He showed me all the kingdoms of the 
earth, and they were beautiful.” 

‘‘ A German princeling — that’s the nearest we 
ever get to a kingdom — who’s been round lately ? 


The Writing on the Wall 31 1 

And why’s it all been kept so dark and what in 
the name of all that’s ridiculous did you say ‘ no ’ 
for?” 

“ I had to.” 

‘‘ Rubbish. Some one’s been talking nonsense 
to you about morganatic marriages. My good 
child, I’ve had a lot of experience, and there’s 
more security, not to mention fun, in such an ar- 
rangement than in anything our rotten marriage 
law allows. But what did his Serene Highness 
say to your far more serene obstinacy ? ” 

‘‘ He isn’t a Highness; he’s quite an ordinary 
young man, and he lives in quite a poor way. 
But he was a prince to me, because I love him; 
and it was a kingdom that he offered, because 
there were children in it. Lydie, the thought of 
those children made it difficult to say ‘ no.’ I’m 
always looking back at them; I’m always aching 
for them; I’m always thinking of their tiny souls 
growing up around me, first, into a family and 
then into a race, and on again into a universe, 
and in each heart the secret that is mine; and for 


312 The Sinking Ship 

a minute I was torn; I thought of saying ‘ yes/ 
and letting the great good come out of the little 
evil.” 

Evil ? Where’s the evil in taking the man 
you want, especially if he wants you? Who was 
to stop your saying, ^ yes,’ if common-sense didn’t 
warn you against garrets ? ” 

“ Something so small that, at first, I thought I 
might pretend not to see it; only the knowledge 
that, if I took him, somebody else would be un- 
happy.” 

Oh, another woman ? That’s comprehensible 
enough — inevitable, indeed, seeing that we’re al- 
ways three to one where matrimony is concerned. 
And would this other woman found your uni- 
verse better than you could ? ” 

“ No; that’s why the choice was hard. She 
doesn’t believe in that universe — not yet ; but she 
believes in one of its bulwarks; she believes that 
the young are kind, that they don’t want to push 
her out. If I’d taken him she would have been 
left to utter darkness, for she loves not him 


The Writing on the Wall 313 

(he’s a boy to her) but his generous defense of 
her.” 

“ I see. And where does the story end ? ” ques- 
tioned Lydie fretfully. 

‘‘ I don’t know, I won’t ask; but it ends in the 
most beautiful way, like every other story of life, 
so long as we don’t interfere.” 

“ As you’d have me end in fact — a saint in a 
white night-gown. But it’s no good; you’ve 
given me a bit of distraction, but that’s all you’ve 
done with your ingenious confession. Do you 
suppose I loved in your way? I can’t endure 
children to begin with, and I couldn’t endure you 
till you began to make yourself indispensable. 
I know nothing of sacrifice, and don’t want to. 
Of course, this is a most desirable atmosphere 
to introduce into a sick-room, but it doesn’t get 
beyond the footlights, it doesn’t penetrate into me; 
I’m too choked up with other ideas, with grue- 
some memories and vile habits. When I drove 
those* fools helter-skelter out of my room the 
devil came prancing in, and I was in hell There 


The Sinking Ship 


314 

wasn’t an inch of solid ground to stand on; it 
crumbled under my feet. You can’t sell your soul 
and snatch it back again at the last minute. 
‘ God’s ’ a high-sounding name, and I know lots 
of people like it as a drug, when nothing else will 
serve their turn. I’m honest at all events; I’ve 
spent the blood-money, and it’s only fair I should 
go and hang myself.” 

‘‘ Then you believe in justice.” 

“ Well, to that extent; though, as you see, I 
don’t take kindly to my dose of it. I’m not a 
fool, though I often wish I were. I think I’m a 
Swedenborgian at bottom. I’m convinced it’s our 
normal tendency that gets its way in the end, and 
my normal tendency is to go down. I seemed to 
be falling through space, feet upwards, into decay 
and fire, into the jaws of the furies, and I knew 
their faces; my scars were on them. I yelled to 
every quarter of the globe and only the echo of 
the shriek came back to me. This room,” she 
turned a ghastly face from side to side of it, “ is 
swarming now with the spirits of -those I’ve 


The Writing on the Wall 315 

trampled on and traded on, it’s black with them, 
it’s shrill with their calls for vengeance.” But 
Sibyl laughed, and the sound was startling; it was 
like the cracking of ice upon a river-bed — a rhyth- 
mic sound, sweet with the promise of rescue and 
the return of spring. 

‘‘ There’s no room for them, Lydie. There 
are too many of my friends here, and mine,” she 
added confidently, ‘‘ are the stronger. Mine have 
been through the fire and the water. There’s 
Daniel, who saw the image of God in the eye of 
the lion; and there’s the little maid who guided 
Naaman, the captain of the host of the king of 
Syria, to the river of healing; and there’s Peter 
the Rock, and John the Beloved, and the daughter 
of Jairus, who heard the voice of Jesus and rose 
from the sleep that we call death; and there are 
all the thousands who found the secret of im- 
mortality and kept it, and were burned with it, 
and stoned with it, and crucified with it, and 
took it back with them into the heart of life; and 
wherever I go they go with me, and when I call 


3i 6 The Sinking Ship 

in the hour of temptation they flock to me and 
circle me, and no one, not even the lover I told 
you of, can fight a way through. You think of 
the earth opening and swallowing you up. I 
think of the heavens opening and of the white 
dove coming down. You think of the darkness, 
and I think of the day breaking and the shadows 
fleeing away, of the light coming, as it’s coming 
now through these curtains. See, I pull them 
aside and you can feel for yourself that it’s all 
true, this wonderful story of life and love; it’s 
coming back to you like a new stock of breath 
into a tired body.” 

She had left her seat, and she stood full in the 
stream of sunlight, her mild and radiant face 
towards the bed. 

“ It’s delusion,” quavered the sick woman, 
“ but, oh, it’s very sweet. I’d like to believe in 
it, only I can’t,” she added, with a last, desperate 
spurt of opposition. ‘‘ You’re a girl of nineteen, 
and at nineteen one can believe in anything, even 
in sacrifice, so long as it’s highly colored. One 


The Writing on the Wall ' 317 

isn’t afraid of risks at nineteen; one isn’t afraid 
of the back of a lover, it’s so certain he’ll turn 
again, or somebody will replace him. No, it’s no 
good, the spell won’t work. Think of my getting 
well and you’ll see it for yourself. I’ve nowhere 
to go to, save back to the theater, and what do 
you suppose would happen to your influence 
there ? No, it’s just a drug, a nice, soothing drug, 
lulling me through the gate of death. I’m done 
for. I wasn’t going to own it to her, but I’ll own 
it to you. I’m done for, and my one comfort is, 
she's done for too, though she’ll hold on maybe 
for another twenty years.” 

“Hush! dear. Nobody is ever done for; 
there's always a way back, only we can’t see it. 
There’s a way back for her, and for you too. 
There’s an answer to this riddle of despair, 
though I’m not wise enough to find it; there’s an 
answer, and it will come. I think it’s coming now 
— in writing — in sunlight on the wall.” But the 
old woman shrieked and raised imploring arms as 
though to ward off the approach of an enemy. 


The Sinking Ship 


318 

“ I won’t have it. Do you hear ? I won’t have 
it. I know the sort of answer you’d produce — a 
convent. You’d take me in and bury me alive; 
you’d feed me on bread and water, and the husks 
of penitence; but I’ll have none of it. I’ll die 
sooner. I’d rather go into the earth in a coffin 
than into salvation by that beastly back-door.” 

“ It isn’t a convent,” said the girl, in the ab- 
sent fashion of one who follows a fine trail of in- 
tuition. The answer’s kind and warm. God 
knows how much you can bear, how much you’ve 
borne already; and it’s very near; in a minute, in 
another minute, I shall be able to read it. I have 
read it,” she added with growing intensity, “ only 
a little while ago, in a book, downstairs, while I 
was waiting to hear the doctor come. It was 
written by a poet, but he was a Christian first, for 
this is what he said — every line is coming back : 

When the pulse of hope falters. 

When the fire flickers low 
On your faith’s crumbling altars. 

And the faithless gods go; 


The Writing on the Wall 319 

When the fond hope ye cherished 
Cometh, kissing to betray, 

When the last star hath perished, 

‘ Love will find out the way.’ 

When the last dream bereaveth you 
And the heart turns to stone. 

When the last comrade leaveth you 
In the desert alone; 

With the whole world before you. 

Clad in battle array. 

And the starless night o’er you, 

* Love will find out the way.’ 

Lydie, there’s love here, throbbing in this room, 
not only my great love for you, but the great 
spring from which it is fed. You’re not going 
back to the theater; you couldn’t go back to that 
place of mist and shadow, that place of false re- 
flection. Some day, some day very soon, the 
theater will be given up to us, and we shall paint 
the truth there; we’re growing tired of pretense. 
Some day the false gods will be turned out and 
the true God will come in, and He will manifest; 
He will speak as He’s speaking now, for the an- 
swer is here, and I can read it on the wall there, 
in letters formed by the sunlight and the shadow. 


320 The Sinking Ship 

and again upon your face. It’s changing, Lydie; 
it’s growing gentle and so beautiful. Your eyes 
are shining like the eyes of a child; you’re not 
afraid any more, for it’s life that’s coming in with 
this fresh morning air; it’s the breath of a living 
God pouring into your veins; it’s life, the life you 
tried to throw away and couldn’t, the life that 
can’t and won’t be lost.” 

Life ! ” echoed the other in a bewildered voice, 
“life! And it’s kind after all. The pressure’s 
going, Sibyl, and the fear’s going, and the anger’s 
gone, and I don’t hate any more. I want her. I 
want to tell her that it isn’t true; that there’s no 
cart, and no guillotine, and no cruel faces lining 
the way to death. Fetch her — quick. I want to 
tell her.” But the voice broke, the figure, 
upright now in the bed, swayed suddenly, 
and the girl ran forward to catch it in her 
arms. 

“ There’s no need to tell — she knows — ^we all 
know, Lydie, in the end.” And then the voice 
stopped, for the traveler had gone, and the eyes, 


The Writing on the Wall 321 

turned up a moment ago in ecstacy of gratitude, 
were but the windows of an empty house. 

Tenderly Sibyl laid her burden down, folding 
the thin hands together, closing the eyelids, dis- 
posing the wasted body with dignity. Time — a 
long time — seemed to pass ; the wind grew mildly 
boisterous and the sun bolder; the curious hiero- 
glyphics on the wall became yet clearer — letters of 
fire and force, they stamped the atmosphere with 
vitality that, shifting like the pictures in a kaleido- 
scope, kept the mind ever on the chase. 

Vanda, peeping furtively out from her hiding- 
place behind the screen, grew gradually indifferent 
to detection. Fascinated, she inhaled the in- 
fluence of the still chamber, yielding, one by one, 
such of her temperamental prejudices as the tor- 
ment of the last weeks had spared. Slowly she 
crept into the heart of this strange country of long 
distrust, fingering and testing and staring, smiling 
and sighing, while into her bearing there came, 
as there had come into that of the dying woman, 
an air of puzzled rapture. 


322 


The Sinking Ship 


From that figure kneeling beside the bed power 
seemed to emanate. Through this frail instru- 
ment the music of immortality began to sound, to 
swell, to transform and to create, until, to the now 
fully captive imagination of the watcher by the 
door, the haunting and elusive age of miracle had 
indeed been restored; the faith of this neglected 
and suspected child, the force of silent prayer, to 
which her being lent itself so unreservedly, so 
gladly, so fearlessly, had touched at last, as with 
a wand, the common things of earth and made 
them holy. Literally and truly the angel came 
down, and the room was a room no longer, but a 
city, spreading till it lay four-square, a new Jeru- 
salem, the city of a mind rebuilt, restored, the 
city of Vanda’s own subtle mind, in which great 
crimes had been enacted and great opportunities 
abused. But, at the thought of opportunity a 
point of light, bright as a star in a vague sky, 
caught and held her attention. One stolen thing 
she could yet replace, one wrong she could yet 
right; and who could tell, in such atmosphere of 


The Writing on the Wall 323 

glorious unreality, what might not evolve from 
this first eager sacrifice of self? 

Cautiously she moved her stiff limbs, cautiously 
she gained the door, the passage, the seclusion of 
her own chamber ; and here, as in the one she had 
fled, the influence stirred, the light shone. 

“ The children,” she whispered, and dropped to 
her knees beside the empty bed, the children, her 
children and his and mine by virtue of this marvel- 
ous new code of relationship; the children grow- 
ing up about us into a family, into a race, into a 
universe; the children given into our hands” — 
she raised her own with dramatic exultation — 
'' and our hands clean ; the theater given into our 
hands, and our hands supple and strong; the 
theater a place of true reflection. Yes, it was that 
she promised; it was — it is to be a temple swept 
clear of the money-changers, and I a priestess of 
the temple. Oh, Unknown God, to Whom, in the 
fastnesses of my nature, I must once have raised 
an altar, in pity of these many scars, forgive, re- 
store and re-inspire till, from the wreck of my 


The Sinking Ship 


324 

presumptuous will, there shall at length evolve 
that gallant ship that man, with youth and intellect 
and generosity upon his side, was yet powerless 
to produce.” Born an artist, educated an artist, 
she would remain an artist to the end ; but, behind 
her florid diction, behind her rather pompous de- 
livery, there now lay the saving grave of sincerity; 
and, as her artificial self yielded to this last and 
most compelling intruder, there passed through 
her all too susceptible body a shiver, a veritable 
serpent passage of profound and awful enlighten- 
ment. 

“ ‘ Eyes and I saw not, ears and I would not 
hear,’ ” she stammered, and for once the glib 
tongue faltered; from the lines of face and form 
the consequence dissolved; wide-eyed she stared 
towards the window and the light, while, on the 
breath between her fluttering lips the spirit of her 
long distrust passed freely in and out, weaving 
into the warp and woof of this peculiar temper 
the fine but indestructible thread of religious con- 
viction. 


The Writing on the Wall 325 

‘‘No need to tell,” she broke out again in halt- 
ing fashion; “ we all know in the end, we all knew 
in the beginning; and it’s just a question of the 
length of the tether. We come out of it; we go 
back into it; the great shapeless it of abstract 
monarchy; innumerable names, innumerable 
aspects, and, behind each and all, the mystical out- 
line of the Trinity; behind each and all the God 
of fire and earthquake, the gentle Son of the car- 
penter, the tender, silver body of the dove; com- 
plexity and simplicity, glory and the daily round, 
and the answer to the puzzle inscribed on the 
white tablet of a child’s unquestioning faith. Oh, 
Sibyl, Sibyl, physical record of my extravagance 
and folly, you make your point, you justify for 
me, at least, the theory of existence, and the story 
ends just as you promised that it should. Hope 
for me and a prince for you and a soul-garden 
for the lot of us. But the world ” — her smile lost 
something of its new-made mother-look — “ the 
world will say, ‘A marriage has been arranged 
between Hadden, only son of a potentate of May- 


326 The Sinking Ship 

fair, and Sibyl, only daughter of an adventurer 
of Bohemia the world will say, ‘ Well done, Bo- 
hemia! No doubt as to who arranged it’; and 
Renshaw, senior, will say, ‘ Oh, be hanged ! ’ and 
his lady will say, ‘ Oh, dear! ’ and none of them 
will say or know that it was a marriage made in 
heaven.” 

















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